i^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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^xipiinglir jQn. 



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Slielf.i._b-3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IN PARADISE 



OK 



THE STATE OF THE FAITHFUL DEAD 

3t S)tulip from l>trtptttre 

ON 

DEATH AND AFTER-DEATH 



BY 

CHAELES H. STRONG, A.M. 

Rector of St. John's Churchy Savannah 






NEW YOKK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 Bible House 
1893 






.^'^ 



Copyright, 1892 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER 



OF CO^RUESS 



V/ASHINGTON 



171, 173 Macdougal Street, New York 



tro 



THE CONGKEGATION OF ST. JOHN^S 

AMONG WHOM 

HE HAS BEEN MINISTERING MANY YEARS 

AND 

IN WHOSE SICK-ROOMS AND BY WHOSE DEATH-BEDS 

THESE THOUGHTS 

UPON 

THE STATE OF THE SAINTED DEAD 

HAVE BEEN OFTEN SPOKEN 

THIS LITTLE BOOK 

AS ALREADY THEIRS 

IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED 

BY THEIR 

FRIEND AND RECTOR 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



In the exercise of that sweetest office of the Chris- 
tian priesthood^ the ministry of sympathy and conso- 
lation to the suffering, there are found in every parish 
these classes : (1) Many Christian people who, in 
spite of the depth of their trust and the sincerity of 
their penitence, do yet tremble at the great mystery 
of death ; (2) Others w^ho, for themselves and for 
their loved ones gone before^ have not yet caught the 
clear horoscope of that future life, as drawn in the 
teaching of Christ and in the testimony of the Church. 
To give light upon this sweet and sacred subject, 
there are many large and learned volumes of our best 
scholars, but these are too erudite to meet the simple 
needs of everyday parochial life. It would seem 
that a little book which aims, in the simplest way, to 
gather up the Churches teaching upon Death, Para- 
dise, the Resurrection and Heaven, might find some 
useful, though humble, place. 

Upon such subjects it is evident that there cannot 
be, and should not be, any attempt at originality. 
Originality here would be irreverence, if not blas- 
phemy. Quotations of thought are not acknowledged, 
as the thoughts are common to all writers upon these 



Prefatory Note. 

themes ; quotations of words are indicated in tlie 
usual way, but to avoid ^^ the disfiguring distractions" 
of footnotes, the authors' names, as also the quotations 
from scripture — which are mostly taken from the 
revised version — are not given. There are three 
special obligations, however, which I wish to ac- 
knowledge : the exegesis of 1 Cor. 13:13 from tlie 
German commentators ; and from Dr. Goodhart the 
new and satisfactory interpretation of 1 Cor. 15:37-38, 
as also the interpretation of the vexed and vexing 
passage in Luke 20:34-37. Among other authors 
quoted are Dr. Plumptre, Canon Knox-Little, Dr. 
Luckock, Mr. Martineau and Mr. Gregg. 

The mission of this little volume will be more than 
accomplished, if it serves to lift the cloud of sadness 
from any distressed heart, or helps any burdened soul 
to realize 

'' There is no death ! What seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian 
Whose portals Ave call death ! '^ 

C, H. S. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Power of Death, 

ir. Death the Golden Gate of Paradise, 

III. In Paradise, 

ly. The Activities of Paradise, 

V. The Fellowship of the Saints, 

yi. Mutual Kecognition and Service, 

yil. Spiritual Bodies, .... 

yill. Heaven, 



PAGE 

1 

15 
31 
45 

59 

74 

89 

104 



I. 

THE POWER OF DEATH. 

Heb. 2:14. ^' Him that had the power of death." 
Tov TO fcpdrog exovra rov '^avdrov 

1% /rUSIC has its lighter tones to express the cheer- 
-^-^ fuhiess^ as also its deeper notes to express the 
pathos of human life ; but the genius of music is best 
interpreted through the harmony of its central register, 
a harmony blended of the melted tones of sorrow and 
of joy. In like manner Nature throws its softer 
colors upon the landscape at dawn and eventide, and 
its darker ones upon the scene in hours of storm and 
terror, but yet nature is best understood and realized 
through the blending of sunlight and shadow that 
move across field and forest through the greater por- 
tion of the day. And so it is with Death ; it is an 
earnest and important question, in what 

The tone ^^^^^ ^^^ color should the Christian think 

and color in 

which to death ? The shallow hopefulness which, 

death. ^Niih airy colors, paints the advent of the 

king of terrors as the cessation of all evil, 

thinking of the rest of Paradise, without the moral 

weight that entitles to that rest, can scarcely be the 



2 In Paradise. 

true Christian attitude. To desire rest from labor is 
well ; but to desire it simply because labor has been 
wearisome is vulgar and certainly un-Christlike. 
Christ has added a deeper solemnity to death^ because 
He has so clearly revealed the greater sacredness of 
life^ and of its duties. To part from the one with 
ease^ and to enter the other with carelessness^ cannot 
be the proper tone. 

And yet certainly it cannot be the Christian atti- 
tude to stand in unwholesome dread of death. In 
Jesus Christ life is a new creation^ and so is death. 
He has thrown the light of His example upon the 
article of dying because He has died^ and upon the 
grave because His sacred body has rested within its 
mysterious portals. To us^ with Christian faith to 
enlighten us, it should never be what death was to 
the Pagan, vrith his dim apprehension of the world of 
shadows. Homer, in the eleventh book of the Odys- 
sey, and Virgil, in the sixth book of the ^neid, con- 
ducted their heroes to the unseen world ; but, at best, 
it was a shadowy world, or, at worst, a gloomy world, 
with the dark Stygian lake, wdth Phlegethon, the 
river of fire, and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. 
But the Ely sian fields and Tartarus — the ^^ isles of the 

blest ^^ and the place of torment — obtained 
Pagan only a slight and mythic hold upon the 

death. popular mind. Belief in the future life 

had shrivelled into '' a slight perhaps '^ in 
the days before the advent of Christ. The divine 



The Power of Death, 3 

PlatOj '' who almost touched the gates of Paradise/^ 
gives the fairest rays of hope in the Phedo and the 
Gorgias^ and his Socrates quits the world with almost 
a Christian hope upon his lips. Tacitus did not ven- 
ture beyond his '' if, indeed^ there is any place for the 
spirits of the pious^ if, as the wise imagine^ the souls 
of the great are not extinguished with their bodies/^ 
Cicero expresses a hope, but stammeringly^ like a 
modern agnostic : '^ If in this I am mistaken, because 
I believe the spirits of men to be immortal, sadly am 
I mistaken/^ Sallust writes that " Csesar urged tor- 
ture rather than death upon traitors, as death had 
lost its restraining force, men ceasing to look for any- 
thing after death/^ With these dim, intangible views 
of another life, it need not surprise us that men met 
death with horror and dread, or some few of the 
nobler sort, like Cato and Seneca, with the calm 
despair of stoicism. The former spent his last hours 
in thinking of the illustrious men of the past, and the 
latter, when Nero's messengers came to his old tutor, 
in composing some of the noblest passages of stoic 
philosophy. But to the great mass of men death was 
an unparalleled catastrophe — '^ simply this and noth- 
ing more.'' 

Does some of this terrified spirit of a hopeless 
Paganism linger among us whose privilege it is to 
live in the climate of a better hope ? It sometimes 
appears so when we see the dread with which many 
Christians look upon the article of dying, and the loss 



4 In Paradise. 

of sustaining hope with which they regard the condi- 
tion of their loved ones who have passed into the 
great mystery. We are recreant to our noblest her- 
itage when we regard death in the light of 
tian concep- ^^^erelv natural and human feeling. By a 
tioii of miracle of love we are placed at a new 

point of view. If we believe the Scrip- 
tures — and this is written for those who do believe 
them heartily and earnestly — then both life and death, 
both the solemn joy of living and the saddening 
thought of dying, are to be regarded in the light of 
Christian revelation. Death is best studied under the 
register that has a harmony blended of joy and sad- 
ness ; under a light woven of sunlight and shadow. 
In a word, " to die can never, w^ithout an enthusiasm 
which does violence to reason and little credit to the 
heart, be an act of transport ; so low as an act of sub- 
mission it need not sink, for this would imply that the 
change from the present to the future is for evil. It 
is most fitly met in the spirit of trust — an unbroken 
belief that it is for the better, but a feeling of reluc- 
tance, which we distrust and check, as though it were 
for the vrorse ; a consciousness that if we chose for 
ourselves we should remain where we are, yet not a 
doubt of the greater wisdom and goodness of God's 
choice that we should go.'' 

AVoven, then, of mingled sunlight and shadow, let 
us look first at some of the shadows which haunt us 
A\'hen advert i no; to our own demise. Children of life 



The Power of Death, 5 

as we are, it is natural and proper that we should 
think more of life and its interests than 
The cer- of that which is only an incident and an 
death. interruption. Possessed by the stronger 

force, we do but follow the line of nature 
when we refuse to spend life in meditation upon the 
tomb. That is only the rhapsody of morbid theology 
which teaches us '' the world is a waste, life a burden, 
and all human affections snares of sin — that in all 
earnest moments of reflection we should sigh for the 
hour which shall rescue us from mortality.^^ React- 
ing from such unreal mysticism the human heart has 
vindicated its right to think sweetly of this earth, 
which is the arena of its struggle and the theatre of 
its triumph, and has often put behind it the thought 
of death. But a true philosophy always takes into 
recognition every fact, and the fact that we must die 
is as sure and certain as the fact that we are living. 
Therefore it is impossible for an honest mind to aban- 
don all speculation upon a fact that so surely fronts 
us, although the hour of its advent is unknown. We 
know the fairest things upon which we gaze and 
around which our hearts cling are proscribed by the 
hand of fate, as well as by the pen of the Apostle, as 
'' temporary.^^ It is the part of common sense some- 
times to think of death. It comes upon others— we 
have often seen the quiet ceremony of its approach ; it 
will, and must surely, come upon us. Its ways of 
approach are as various as the characters of the men 



6 In Paradise. 

it strikes, but that is little ; the fact is everything. 
With the mass of our race it gently leads them down 
the hill of life into the valley of the shadows ; with 
some, and that a large number, it smiles over the spot 
where love has cradled them, and bears away the 
young life as too tender for the experience of a rough 
world ; with others it strikes them down in the prime 
of manhood, leaving the column broken, and the life 
incomplete. Some it watches through the era of a 
long sickness ; others it calls by a sudden and impe- 
rious volition ; some it sends forth to a martyr's 
crown, when duty, patriotism and conscience weigh 
life as cheap in the scales with honor ; others it waits 
for at the foot of the scaffold, when human society is 
vindicating the laws which secure its being. The 
ways of death are little important except as they are 
associated with honor or dishonor. To us, as a per- 
sonal experience, it is absolutely unknown and un- 
knowable, but we shall soon know it better. " In a 
world of infinite possibilities, and therefore of im- 
measurable uncertainties ; a world in which we feel 
at every dawn like travellers in a country unmapped, 
because hitherto unexplored ; in a world in which no 
set of circumstances is with each soul precisely the 
same ; in a world in which new landscapes, so to 
speak, are ever being unfolded before the astonished 
eyes ; in such a world it is no trifling matter of which 
it can be said, '' this at least is certain : certainly we 
shall die.'' Of a fact so certain, amid a world of 



The Power of Death. 7 

change^ it is surely Avell to think — to think how ive 

shall meet death when our time comes ; to meditate 

beforehand upon the lights and shadows of this great 

event^ and from Scripture to learn the true meaning 

of death. 

Men dread death from anticipation of the pain 

connected with it. There is the dread 

Eeasons for that when the undying spirit leaves its 
the dread of ^ .,. , „. in ,* - 

death. tamiiiar dwelling-place the separation is 

^' "^^^ P?^^^ accompanied with bodily pain, as thoup;h 

connected ^ . , 

with it. the body clung tenaciously to its tenant 
and would be parted only by duress — a 
pain all the keener because^ perhaps^ of the weakened 
power to express it. The horror of nightmare arises 
because the tongue seems tied and cannot speak ; let 
it but utter a sound and arouse the sleeper, when at 
once the ugly vision flees. Pain is, as we know, the 
impairment of function in an organ ; it is therefore 
thought that as disease marches on its victorious 
career, organ after organ becomes impaired, and pain 
is multiplied upon pain in the consciousness of the 
dying. Brave men who have often faced death at the 
cannon's mouth shudder at the slow wasting of dis- 
ease ; and, most strange of all, the aged, in whom 
many a string is already cut between their immortal 
spirit and its wasted tenement, shrink from what is 
in store for them. But apart from saying that to be 
much concerned about the physical pain of an organ- 
ization ceasing to be were an un-manly and un-Chris-- 



8 In Paradise, 

tian fear^ the dread is not true in fact. Death is not 
the violent wrenching apart of body and soul^ as it is 
commonly regarded^ but rather is the gentle parting 
of clasped hands. By a loving Providence^ the dis- 
ease which increases the pain of death by impairment 
of function^ diminishes the consciousness of it by the 
same impairment. As the angel of death approaches 
the climax of his work the mind becomes more un- 
conscious of his presence and of his devastation^ until 
at last^ when his strange work is done^ the mind de- 
parts^ leaving upon the cold features a smile of bene- 
diction^ as if the life-long friends — the spirit and its 
tabernacle — had parted in peace. Thus it is that Ave 
do not find in death itself that dread of death nor that 
fear of pain which we anticipate while living. Few 
are the death-beds where pain is felt^ and there need 
be none^ for science has accepted the creed that severe 
pain must be alleviated^ and stands ready^ like the 
soldier at the cross offering upon his spear the anas- 
thesia of relief It were better to refuse it^ as did the 
Sufferer of Calvary^ that we might be baptized with 
His baptism of fire^ but if the spirit be not caj^able 
of so Christ-like an endurance it need not suffer 
when the hour comes. At most there is nothing 
in the pain of death to raise in any mind the fear 
of dying. 

IMen sometimes dread death because it is so great a 
mystery. It is the exchange of the known for the 
unknown ; of the loved and familiar for the new and 



The Power of Death. 9 

strange. It is a law of nature that there must always 

be some apprehension about the unknown 

2. The mys- and mysterious^ some dread of the great 

exdiange'of secret which has never been revealed by 

the known ^iWY traveller returnins: hither from its 

for the 

unknown. bourne. An old inhabitant of one of tlie 

villages of Erin has been summoned to 

America by the claim of children and of kindred. In 

that village he has passed the best years of his life ; 

over the blue waters of Killarney^s lakes he has often 

rowed in boyhood ; in that same cottage in the green 

valley he has grown from infancy to manhood, and 

now, with whitening locks and trembling limbs, he 

can no longer v/ork, and the summons comes to cross 

the unknown sea. Friends and children are upon 

the other side, still it is years since he has seen them ; 

they may have altered in the years which have elapsed 

since they parted from him ; here all is so familiar 

and so dear — there everything is so strange, so new 

and so untried ; shall we wonder that he shrinks from 

this new experience? Can we blame him that he 

prefers the attachments which bind him to his home ? 

Can he leave those scenes endeared to him by many 

associations without a wrench, nay, without a dread 

of what awaits him upon the other side ? This dread 

of the unknown and of parting with the present and 

the dear came to our Lord most keenly. As Marti- 

neau beautifully urges : " If Christ felt the cup to be 

bitter, and turned for a moment from the draught ; if 



10 In Paradise. 

He trembled that He should see no more the towers 
of Jerusalem^ though to see them had drawn forth 
prophetic tears ; if He sorrowed in spirit to bid adieu 
to the family of Bethany^ though the tie Avas that of 
friendship and not of home ; if He hid His head at 
parting in the bosom of the beloved disciple^ though 
to Mary the mother^ that disciple was needful still ; 
if He had rather that the immortal spirits of the elder 
time should come to commune with Him under thic 
familiar oaks of Tabor^ than Himself be borne to 
them^ He knew not whither ; if the Mount of Olives^ 
his favorite retreat of midnight prayer^ and the shore 
of the Galilean Lake^ witness to the musings and en- 
terprises of His opening ministry^ and the verdant 
slojDCS of Nazareth^ sacred with the memories of early 
years^ seem to gaze in upon His melted soul with a 
beseeching look that He would not go ; may not we^ 
without the reproach of impiety, feel that to depart is no 
light struggle, and cast a lingering glance at the friendly 
scene we quit ? ^^ Certainly this shrinking from the 
unknown and the untried testifies to the worth of our 
present natural affections, and may justly be permitted 
to our longing human heart ; but still, there is no oc- 
casion of dread in this exchange of worlds. It is true 
that the world and scenery and environment to which 
we are summoned are unknown, but not all of it is un- 
known and unfamiliar. To us, if we would but 
earnestly believe it, a revelation has been given. De- 
tails of that future life are not known to us, and, by 



The Power of Death. 11 

the necessity of the case (and the necessity of the case 
is that we must be trained by the exercise of trust and 
faith, and not by the possession of sight and knowl- 
edge) cannot be made known to us. Still, enough 
has been revealed to indicate the spirit of that other 
life, and the spirit of Him who is its Lord ; if, there- 
fore, we will mould our lives in the spirit of our 
Saviour, seek to have " the spirit of Christ, and to be, 
therefore, one of His,'^ then the unknown will become 
to us the partly known, and Paradise will not be al- 
together the land of mystery. And it may also be- 
come the familiar and the dear. The heart goes 
where its treasures are. As the objects of earthly af- 
fection are taken from us we must allow^ reverent 
imagination to have its play ; the child is not where 
the white stone proclaims its resting-place ; it is not 
there, but risen where the angels are ; follow it with 
devout fancy, and say to the desponding heart, '' See, 
there it is among the angels ; listen to the welcome 
voices ; look at it, v/ithin the arms which once so gladly 
took up little children and blessed them ; no sin will 
ever fleck its perfect purity ; it learns from the holiest 
of lips lessons which never man, nor woman either, 
could ever speak.^^ In a word, cast into tlie un- 
known, as we are bidden to do, " every blessed re- 
membrance, every high pursuit, every unanswered 
aspiration, every image pure and dear, and invest 
them with a divine and holy beauty ; '^ then the at- 
mosphere of our earthly homes will settle upon and 



12 In Paradise, 

over the vales of Paradise. And when tlie summons 
of death eomes to us^ it may be permitted us to trem- 
ble^ but to dread its invitation^ as to something alto- 
gether unknown and unfamiliar^ will not be possible 
to the devout imagination. 

Finally, men dread death because there is a sting 

connected with it. " The sting of death 
3. The is sin/^ and sin^ we know, ^^is the trans- 

death, gression of the law^^^ of God, and the 

blessed dead, whose condition we are con- 
sidering, are not without experience of its hateful 
poison. Even to the best of Christian men and women 
comes the thought — it comes, indeed, in proportion to 
their moral sensitiveness — that they are unworthy of 
the infinite purity of Christ ; they feel that the joy of 
Paradise is so great that they are without title to its 
bliss, and the j)unishment of transgression so sure and 
certain that they are within the purview of its pen- 
alty, and hence they look forw^ard to the future, not 
with the torture of a guilty soul apprehensive of its 
merited condignment, but with the trembling ap^^re- 
hension that they are not, and never can be, worthy 
of its rewards. Human merit, with all allowance, is 
so slight ; but divine love, it must be remembered, is 
like the sun — never a statistical sun, counting up the 
merits of the objects on which it shines, but pouring 
forth its honeyed sunbeams simply because it is the 
sun, and must shine. It may give one ray of com- 
fort to the dvinp; hour of the faithful Christian to re- 



The Poiver of Death. 13 

member that Christ says^ '^ If ye love Me, keep My 
commandments/^ and the word ^^keep^^ (rrjpecv) means 
not perfect success in keeping, but a sincere and earn- 
est desire to keep, to be on the look-out or watch- 
tower, to be on the post of observation, like a sentinel, 
to Avatch for the commands of God, that we may both 
observe and seek to do them. The important thing is 
to desire to do as God wills, to love His will and 
seek to make it ours, ever to be assured and know 
that what God orders in every event of life is the 
best for us. The success in keeping His command- 
ments is not so much the cause that determines the 
destiny of the soul, as the desire and the consecration 
of our lives to that desire, to do wdiat God commands. 
Therefore the true Christian need not dread death, be- 
cause in his veins has flowed the poison of many a 
sin. Stung he has been, many a time, by the sting 
of sin ; he will feel it at his death-hour, and dread 
what it has stored up for him ; his conscience, edu- 
cated by Christ, will look, perhaps morbidly, on the 
evil thoughts and deeds and words which he has ut- 
tered, and rightly too, for against infinite purity little 
deeds of sin look large and black, as motes are seen 
so numerous and so large in the path of a sunbeam. 
But our comfort in such remorse is that Christ looks 
at tlie desires of the lieart, and if He sees these turned 
towards God and holiness, though often interrupted 
and frustrate and imperfect, yet will He, who is the 
interpreter of a boundless love, with His own pierced 



14 In Paradise. 

hand^ pull out the sting aucl cicatrice the wound with 
Plis healino; foro:iveness. 

Apart from these three there are no other shadows 
which should linger about a Christian's death-bed. 
These are sufficient to send a beam of darkness 
athvrart the brightest sunlight^ but that cloudy as we 
shall now^ see^ is inspanned with the silver lining of 
Christian hope. 



II. 

DEATH THE GOLDEI^ GATE OF 
PAEADISE. 

Piiil.l:21. " To die is gain." 
nal TO diro^avelv Kegdog 

WHAT is the interpretation of death in the 
sunlight in which Christ has placed it? 
There is immense significance in the words of the 
creed, which we say so frequently, and yet which no 
iteration of custom can ever stale : ^^ I 
cance of believe in Jesus Christ — dead and buried/^ 

Christ's That He, in whom was life eternal, should 
death. ... . 

yield His spirit to the darkness, and His 

body to the experience of death and burial, is of itself 

a profound fact. Yet, paradox as it seems, it is one 

we can easily read. The ideal of our race in the life 

He lived, it was necessary that He should complete 

that ideal to the utmost limits, by submitting — as He 

did to baptism ^^to fulfil all righteousness^^ — so to 

death to fulfil all the experiences of humanity. So 

the evangelists wrote out in full the details of His 

death-bed — w^here the bed of the ebbing life was the 

hard wood of the cross — that the creed of Christendom 



16 In Paradise. 

might forever read^ not '' He was crucified^ and passed 
to Paradise/' but '^ He was crucified^ dead and buried.'^ 
And the thought in Christian minds ever since has 
been : '' He passed through the common doom of 
death^ and His sacred body was sealed up in the mys- 
terious tomb^ ^^ and, in some way, it has softened, to 
the Chi'istian, the idea of dying, and shed a benign 
and holy light upon the graves of the dead. It 
cannot be so fearful for the disciple to do what the 
]\Iaster did, nor for his frail body to rest in a place 
consecrated by His. 

Death, then, begins to emerge from the gloom into 
the light. St. Paul declares that the perfection of our 
Lord's humanity necessitated the endurance of death : 
'^ Since then the children are sharers in flesh and 

blood. He also Himself in like manner 
St. Paul's partook of the same ; that through death 
of it. He might bring to naught him that had 

the power of death.'' And inasmuch as 
life to the Apostle was always real and earnest, he 
clothed his thoughts with martial language ; constructs 
a battle-field where he sees the two great foes of hu- 
man life retreating, cries after them, with no little 
scorn, as they hasted away baffled, " O, death ! where 
is thy sting? O, grave ! where is thy victory?" As 
we share the apostolic thought it becomes impossible 
for us henceforth to regard death as the bludgeon 
(to hpdrog) of him that hath the power of death. We 
must shift our point of view. We must realize that. 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise. 17 

in some way^ death has been greatly changed. We 
must learn to look upon it^ in spite of all natural and 
distressing environment^ as better than we think. 
What unutterable things are we permitted to think 
about this solemn ending of human life which men of 
other and darker days were unable to devise ? Cer- 
tainly we cannot meditate upon it apart from Christ ; 
but we are at liberty to feel^ and to feel truly and 
earnestly, all that lies within the Christ-given horo- 
scope. 

There is so much to be said in reply to the broad, 
general question, " What is the Christian interpretation 
of death ? ^^ that we must separate the sub- 
Division ject and look at it in some kind of classi- 

Of the sub- ^ , , -rx 1 T r» 1 1 

ject. hed order. Death, as lite leads up to it ; 

Death, as life merges into it ; Death, as 
life passes through it to other worlds ; let these be 
our three radiant points. 

Life^ — as it goes sweeping on to death — what is tlie 
significance of it ? AVe know that the life-quality of 

the soul is stronger than the death, that the 
1. Death, as vital transcends the moribund ^ and so the 
prepared for lif^-hours may of themselves lay aside 
by life. time to prepare for the death-hour. Death 

should therefore be regarded in the first 
place as an event for which Christ tells us, though 
ignorant of the hour of its advent, to prepare by a 
life, by a character and conduct, of preceding holiness. 
Hence, think a moment of this : Death is an event 



18 /// Paradise, 

prepared for by life. " Lord^ make me to know mine 
end^ and the measure of my dajs^ what it is ; let me 
know how frail I am/^ — this was the wish of David. 
" So teach us to number our days that we may get us 
an lieart of wisdom '' — this was the prayer of Moses. 
Both were ante-Christian^ but they embody the thought 
of Christ. AVe must consider our end^ the days meas- 
ured off in imagination^ and the days numbered on 
the scale of a fading mortality^ for the purpose of get- 
ting a heart of wisdom and knowing how frail we 
are ; a veiy consumptiveo as it were^ in face of eter- 
nity ; the frail pappus of a dandelion^ blown away by 
every wind. In view of this necessary frailty, our 
Lord teaches that, as the dandelion must make its 
seed while the sun is shining, so the Christian must 
prepare for death while he is living the throbbing 
hours of life. His own life was the prelude to death. 
Everything He did vras so full of life, the rich and 
bounding life of goodness and of truth, that death, 
and the thouglit of death, could not distm^b its even 
movement. " He carried the atmosphere of eternity 
into the work and trials of time. We, on the other 
hand, either forget the claims of eternity, or neglect 
the duties of time. Christ did neither.^^ Death as 
the gate of eternity was ever before Him ; even in the 
hour when most transfigured. His "^ decease ^^ was not 
absent from His thoughts ; He ever listened for " the 
hour ^' that should strike for Him on the dial-plate of 
eternity. Xot that He spoke so much of eternity, for 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise. 19 

His life was permitted by necessity only to be practi- 
cal. " He worked/^ says another^ '' while it was 
called to-day. He taught tlie ignorant^ rebuked the 
sinful^ comforted the sorrow-laden^ lived the role of a 
son^ of a friend, of a teacher, of a citizen, of a prophet, 
of a priest all in one, and did each perfectly. That 
was the wonder. He neglected nothing, was never 
swayed by ephemeral circumstance, or failed to main- 
tain between conflicting duties a due proportion.^^ It 
was a life lived in the midst of the world, going about 
'' doing good ^^ and finding the " common round ^^ of 
daily duty ample employment for its powers, but en- 
closed and permeated at every moment by an atmos- 
phere above the w^orld. And so it is that y/e can 
best prepare for death. We can make life so full by 
noble purposes, by high ambitions, by strong aifec- 
tions, and by generous deeds, that death w^ill fall upon 
it only like a transient shadow upon a full and bound- 
ing stream. We can make life so rich with perma- 
nent qualities that the mind unconsciously grows to 
think of death only as an arch through which the 
river of life passes on to new and fuller scope. 

Death bid an incident or temporary interruption to 
life. " He that believeth on Me, though 
2. As an in- he die, yet shall he live.'^ Our Lord 
interruption ^^^^^ crowcls death into a subordinate part 
to life. of the sentence, as if it were, as it really 

is in fact, and as it ought always to be 
reo:arded — onlv a slight thino;, an incident in the 



20 In Paradise, 

even flow of life. Practieally He bids us regard it as 
we regard the night and the storm different from the 
day and the sunlight^ but destined soon to pass by 
and end. Death is sunk in so many terrible associa- 
tions; many that have come down from heathen 
times ; many that are created by ignorant or by false 
interpretations of scripture ; many that arise from 
failure to grasp the heavenly promises ; many that 
spring from morbid human feelings^ that it becomes 
necessary to do as Christ did — assign to it its true 
place. It is subordinate to life. Death is the 
destruction of our material frame^ but that has^ ac- 
cording to science^ been destroyed many times in the 
course of our earthly pilgrimage^ every seven years 
every atom of our bodies being renewed. It does in 
a moment and all together^ that vrhich has frequently 
been done during life. But the matter destroyed was^ 
after all^ only the instrument of the spiritual life — the 
hands^ the feet^ the brain^ mth its thousands of cells^ 
were only puppets^ connected by strings^ and moved 
according to the dictates of the imperial soul^ so that 
when the body dies^ the heart ceases to beat^ the blood 
to flow^ and the muscles to move^ the soul lives on^ 
can think^ will, love^ liope^ aspire^ as much as ever^ 
probably with new organs of expression. Viewed in 
this way^ life is stronger than death. Every nerve 
may be as dead as when cut by a knife^ but this is 
only to say that the soul has lost its ordinary method 
of expression ; it is as ready as ever to give expres- 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise, 21 

sion ; clothe it with a spiritual body^ and doubtless it 

will revel in expression as much as before. The 

whole line of thought seems to say to us— looking at 

the meaning of our text: ^^ Align yourself with 

Christ. He holds the keys of death and the grave. 

Come close to Him by love so that you also can put 

your hands upon the keys^ and you will find that^ in 

proportion as you ally yourself with Him^ the close 

of life which you now so much dread will sink down 

into an episode. Or- — -to keep the same images^ an 

arch through which your life flows ; a drawbridge 

which rises and falls across your path ; an incident 

which will happen or fall upon you some day ; an 

interruption that comes to your thinkings willing^ 

loving^ but only transitory. Let us speak truly : 

life is not transitory^ but death is. That is the 

transition through which we pass from things below 

and painful to things above and beatific. 

This leads us to think of death^ next^ as a conquered 

thing. " Death hath no more dominion over Him.^^ 

" O, grave ! where is thy victory ? ^^ 

3. As a con- '' Christ hath abolished death.^^ All this 
quered . 

thing. IS very strong language^ especially so to 

those '' who^ through the fear of death^ are 
subject unto bondage.^^ It says to the Christian : 
" Death had once in men's fears a dominion- — it has 
it no more ; it had in early days a victory over men's 
minds ; it has been wrenched from the grasp of the 
grave ; it has, in fact^ been altogether abolished.'' It 



22 /;/ Paradise. 

is not necessary to go back to other times to prove tlie 
tyranny of cleatli over the human imagination ; it Avas 
intensely terrible then ; it is somcAvhat terrible noAV, 
but as a gloomy and unaccountable event the Chris- 
tian does not accept it. For Christ passed through 
this croAvning experience of humanity that '' through 
death He might destroy him that had the poAver of 
death/' i.e. the de\^il^ '' and deliA^er them ayIio^ through 
fear of death^ AA^ere all their lifetime subject to bond- 
age." To conquer an enemy it is only necessary to 
strip him of the armor AV^herein he trusted, and to 
take aAvay his poAA^er of doing harm. This our Lord 
has done AA^th regard to death. He has descended to 
its nethermost darkness^ undergone its final pang^ and 
returning thence has told us that there is nothing 
there AA^hich a Christian need dread. 

So far^ then^ as our first point is concerned, the 
attitude of the Christian mind toAvards death in the 
hours and years preceding its adA^nt^ Ave shall find it 
a great comfort habitually to regard life as ahvays 
superior to death, reaching it finally to find death a 
concjuered foe ; and only an accident in immortality, 
an experience for AN^hich CA^ery year of faithful service 
has prepared us. 

In consequence of these facts there began to appear 
AAiiat might be called a Christian tone in regard to the 
great close of luiman life. Death is declared to he 
a "gain,^^ an advantage, a something better. " To die 
is gain," exclaimed St. Paul ; and, in another place, 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise. 23 

"having the desire to depart and be with Christy 
for it is very far better/^ This is clearly 
4. As " a to be distinguished from the similar wish 
Shing «f Job: "O, that I might have my re- 
better. quest ! and that God would grant me the 

thing I long for V^ or^ from the bitter excla- 
mation : " I loathe my life ; I would not live alway/' 
The one is the writhing of an embittered spirit^ speak- 
ing from the emptiness of life^ with no clear prospect 
of another world ; the other is the exclamation of a 
thoroughly healthy man^ speaking out of the fullness 
of life^ and clearly discerning his eternal hope. The 
former is common enough with distempered spirits^ 
but the latter is assuredly the true Christian attitude. 
It is the attitude of perfect trusty willing to abide here 
in the world as long as duty incomplete seems to de- 
mand its stay^ but feeling sure that the great act of 
transition is a distinct gain and betterment. How 
greatly have mortal hopes moved on and up since the 
days when men faced eternity with an " awful per- 
haps '^ or a " possible if ^^ upon their lips ! It never 
occurred to the ancients^ it rarely occurs to us^ that a 
strongs healthy nature^ in full employment of its fac- 
ulties^ and in the midst of great and active duties^ out 
of no morbid sentiment^ from no exhaustion at the 
discouragements of duty^ might yet distinctly long for 
the close of life as a positive betterment and gain. It 
shows us how Christ has transfigured the whole con- 
ception of death. It tells us in the midst of the 



24 /// Paradise. 

common fears of mortality that so hopeful an attitude 
is possible to us. It seems to shame any sense of 
dread and of uncertainty that may haunt us who all 
our life-time are subject to bondage through such fears 
for ourselves or for our loved ones. Their present 
condition is distinctly a " gain ; '^ they Iiave an " ad- 
vantage ^^ over us who remam. No matter how many 
ties of pure and refined attachment have bound us 
together in a home ; no matter how great the affection 
that has subsisted between us nor how deep that 

" Love, the dear delight, of hearts that know no guile, 

AVho all around see all things bright with their own magic smile/' 

yet their life now is " far better/^ for they are with 

Christ. What '^ to be with Christ ^^ means we shall 

see later ; but meanwhile it is like a flood of light 

upon a very dark place^ to think of the great^ solemn 

article of death as a gain. If it be a gain it cannot 

be so dreadful to pass into its experience^ however 

greatly our mortal nature may shrink from it; if it 

be a gain it cannot be a loss, as we so often speak of 

it, and we should prepare for it as men who are about 

to gain, not to lose, a splendid heritage. 

The article of death is accompamed by a sense of 

peace and of the divine presence, " Thou 

5. Accom- art with me ; Thy Eod and Thy Staff 
panied bv ?? -r i i mi 

peace and support me. " Ltom^ now iettest Ihou 

God s pres- r^^y gery^nt depart in peace.'^ It was 
ence. -^ i r 

an old man's prayer, but an old man 

whose life had been passed in the best conditions for 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise, 25 

earthly peace. In his life righteous^ and in the ser- 
vice of God devout^ his heart ever looking for the 
consolation of Israel ; among his race retaining the 
pure spirit of trust in God and in His promises ; 
living in the holy atmosphere of the temple^ doubtless 
this aged patriarch had lived more than most men a 
life devoid of worldly strife^ and had found such 
peace as this world could give^ but it did not 
compare with " the peace which is from above/^ And 
so^ the great wish of his heart gratified^ with the con- 
solation of Israel held at last in his trembling arms^ 
he breathed out the simple request that the peace and 
presence of God might wait upon his death-bed. 
Doubtless his prayer was granted, and " the latter end 
of that man was peace.^^ Apart from the promises of 
scripture it is often seen in fulfillment that God waits 
upon the dying hour of his saints with a special bene- 
diction. The long-dreaded event has come within 
the door and to the bedside ; the feeble hand reaches 
to the brow and finds the death-dew settled there, and 
the sufferer knows the hour appointed for him on 
the dial-plate of time is ringing in his ears, — but where 
are the gloom and darkness which he anticipated? 
Can this be death, the king of terrors, who so gently 
is soothing the weary brain to sleep ? Slowly the 
clock ticks upon the mantle-piece, slowly the heart 
grows weak, but where are the fear and the dread ? 
A Hand seems to take the attenuated hand within a 
loving grasp, a Voice to whisper : '^ Be not afraid ; ^^ 



26 In Paradise, 

and quietly as a child might be bosomed on its moth- 
er's breast^ the weary soul is soothed into the restful 
sleep of death. Nor is the nursing complete even 
when the angel of death has done its work and re- 
tired ; for invisible hands seem to rub out each 
wrinkle of care, and throw a smile so peaceful upon 
the worn and pallid features, as a parting sunbeam 
lingers on a dreary landscape. " Precious in the 
sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints.'^ 

Look now at the issues of death. These will re- 
veal to us more than the preceding thoughts the 
Christian interpretation of death and why 

6. As the j^ jg ^ 2;ain. Death is the transition from 
transition ^ ^ 

from the the evils of the icorld. '' Eemember that 

world. i\^^o\\. in thy lifetime receivest thy good 

things, and likewise Lazarus evil things, 
but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'' 
There is a very necessary postulate to be supplied in 
this sentence. Of course it does not, and cannot 
mean : '' now he is comforted and receives good 
things, because in life he received evil things ; '' but — 
supply the elision and omission — ^^lie received evil 
things and bore them icell, now, therefore, he is com- 
forted.^^ Death is not a simple transition from evil 
to good ; it is not going to end all evil and make us 
superlatively hapj^y, without any moral title on our 
part. We are not simply to slip into this because we 
have been sufferers in the world ; ah, no ! Paradise 
is not so easily gained. But to have had an evil lot 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise, 27 

in the world^ and to have borne it well^ it is to such 
an one that death comes as a joyful transition from 
evil. To the noble sufferers in any one of the vast 
catalogues of human ill^ it comes as the escape^ the 
relief^ the cessation from all evil^ provided the one 
condition be fulfilled^ that we have tried to bear our 
lot well. To have toiled and labored through the 
whole of life^ fulfilling the great law of humanity, 
with many an inward weariness, but never an out- 
ward taking our hand from off the plow, longing for, 
and hastening forward to a rest that never came — at 
last to have the burden drop from the shoulder, the 
strained nerves give way to rest, the anxious give 
over the struggle for subsistence, ah ! what bliss : 
Death is the cessation from labor. To have been the 
victim for many a day and, it may be, years, of physi- 
cal pain, disease, and deformity ; to have been scarcely 
ever free from pain, our nerves the heated pathways 
of quick-footed messengers of disorder, the body worn 
and weary with the sharp maladies of disease, yet 
cheerfully to have lived among the well and strong, 
our presence a source of sunshine to others — and then 
to have all pain cease — all disease gone — all deformity 
forever removed — ah ! death is the cessation of pain and 
disease. To have other struggles in life, — struggles not 
now of the body but of the soul^ — to have strong 
yearnings for knowledge, but baffled on every side 
by the limitations of this existence, an existence which 
can only know in part, and must see through a glass 



28 In Paradise. 

darkly ; to liave tlie deeps of mighty affection stirred 
within Tis^ but tlieir objects swept away by the relent- 
less tides of a brief mortality ; to have cherished a 
great expectation of justice^ but never seen its fair 
equities done between man and man ; to have strug- 
gled^ as we vrent through life^ in all the nngenial 
ways of a wrong environment^ yet to have kept our 
honor^ courage, and perseverance intact and undis- 
mayed — then to pass from partial knowledge to full^ 
from broken affections to renewed, from defeated jus- 
tice to supreme^ from ungenial circumstances to favor- 
able, ah ! this is part of the blessed transition ; death 
is the cessation of all ignorance, all injustice, and even 
of death itself. And then there are the noblest strug- 
gles of all — struggles now of the immortal spirit. To 
have the high standard of Christian purity and holi- 
ness, and the internecine strife with all the band of 
turbid passions; to have the highest and holiest 
aspirations, rising ever toward God and heaven — and 
then aspiration with its wing cut by some grovelling 
sin, wounded on the earth ; to long for light and truth, 
to pierce " the sad and solemn mysteries of human life/^ 
and then to fall back baffled and discouraged by some 
earth-born doubt, but ever to have preserved fidelity 
and love ; to these, the choice spirits of humanity, 
death will come as the cessation of all sin, all doubt, 
all infirmity. In one brief sentence, whatever of evil 
has fallen, falls to-day, or shall fall, upon any child 
of man, whether to his body, bringing any pain or 



Death the Golden Gate of Paradise, 29 

misery^ or to his soul^ causing any darkness or dis- 
tress^ or to his immortal spirit^ bringing any agony or 
rebellion^ death shall take away that evil from body, 
soul, or spirit, in the transition to the other world, if 
he has borne that evil with a Christianas trust and 
perseverance. 

In a word. Death is the transition to blessedness. 
'' Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.^^ Not 

the full and perfect blessedness of heaven, 
7. As the for those who are in Paradise '^ without us 
blessedness, shall not be made perfect ;^^ but blessedness 

there is to every one who dies in Christ : 
blessedness, on the one side, in the evils of the world 
lie has gone from ; blessedness, on the other, in the 
joys of the world he has gone to. What those joys 
are we shall soon consider. 

But in closing our meditation upon death, let us 
be true to both sides of the great event. That the 

human heart should weep at death — that 
Conclusion, to '' leave all that has gladdened the eye, 

enchanted the ear, stirred the intellect, 
soothed and satisfied the heart, should always be a 
great pang '^ — that the pain of death, the mystery of 
death, and the sting of death, should fill the soul with 
trembling — is both natural and permitted by Him 
Who wept at the grave of Lazarus. But these fears 
are mostly in anticipation, and disappear as we draw 
near to the great reality. And whatever of darkness 
remains is more than illuminated by the sunlight of 



80 in Paradise, 

Christian hope. In union with the Lord of life^ life 
comes crowding in upon the soul, and death dwindles 
down to an episode. The Christian at least 

" can moralize 



And say that Death is but a mediator 
Between the lower and the loftier lifeo'^ 

With hands confident^ though trembling, he can open 
the portals of death " as but the little golden gate that 
opens into Paradise/^ 



III. 

m PARADISE. 

Luke 23:43. ^' To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.'' 
fiET^ Efiov 807j EV TG) TTapadeiao) 

THE solemn close of life has come at last. Death 
has come on " so gentle a wing^ the feeble pulse 
fluttering into stillness^ the light of the eye retiring 
within^ the fleeting breath ceasing to 

Distinction breathe/^ that the spirit has departed in 

of body and , -i -r .i , 

spirit. reverent silence, in that moment, ever 

solemn and mysterious in human lives, the 
minds of men make a true and important distinction ; 
they separate the fate of the spirit from that of the 
body. They estimate correctly, for a moment at 
least, their true relation. They realize then that the 
body has been only the instrument of the mind ; it 
has received its nobility from being associated with 
the immortal spirit. Parted from its lordly tenant, 
there is no longer consciousness or personality con- 
nected with that lifeless form. Precious as it has been 
from a thousand sacred associations, the body can no 

31 



82 in Paradise. 

longer be honored with the personal pronoun " he ^^ 
or ^^she;^^ the body now is It^ — a precious things yet 
devoid of personality. Its future is clearly known^ — 
the reverent burial^ the sacred entombment in the 
grave^ but where is the immortal spirit ? 

But before we answer this question^ let us insist for 
the sake of Christian truth^ on the importance of pre- 
serving the distinction between the body and the soul^ 
in our thoughts and language. Let us not 
Importance speak^ — and if not speak^ certainly not 
ing^tSr'" think,— of burying our loved ones ; that 
distinction, were impossible. Even Socrates, a heathen, 
could say : '^ You can bury me, Critias, if 
you can catch my spirit ; you can bury my body, but 
that is not to bury me,''^ Much more should a Chris- 
tian feel that all the legions of the prince of darkness 
could not place an immortal spirit in the grave. 
Wherever it is, certainly it is not there. The rever- 
ent burial, the flowers which love puts above the tomb, 
the careful watch which bereaved affection keeps over 
the graves of its loved ones, is both true and tender 
and is permitted to us. Says one : " There is a com- 
fort in kneeling on some fair spring morning by the 
freshly-sodded grave, Avhere the body rests which we 
have loved. The sun is up, the flowers are waking, 
the trailing ivy leaves are brushing the grasses of the 
grave. Sweet light is round you, soft sounds are in 
your ears, the light of morning changing the dancing 
waves into a confusion of sparkling gold, making the 



!n Paradise. S3 

unbending yew tree glad ; the sound of joyous birds^ 
of busy breezes^ of lapping waves — waves whose soft 
strong cadence speaks the murmurous music of the 
sea/^ But while thus engaged^ fail not to hear the 
angel of the loved one^s life : " Not here, but risen/^ 
Let no false epitaph carved on the cold marble which 
marks the spot lead your imagination to fancy them 
beneath the sod. We do not have to travel to the 
city of the dead to find them. They never have been 
there ! 

Compared with many of our modern inscriptions, 
there is so much truthfulness, as well as a calm and 
serene pathos, in the inscriptions of the 
Inscriptions catacombs. Of the forty thousand which 
catacombs, have been collected there is not one that 
confuses body with spirit and makes the 
resting-place of one the habitat of the other. Gener- 
ally they contain a prayer for the departed, and read 
like these : '' Hilaris, may you live happily with your 
friends ; may you be refreshed in the peace of God ; ^^ 
'' Kalemos, may God refresh thy spirit together with 
that of thy sister, Hilara.^^ Sometimes the prayer is 
for refreshment, sometimes for light ; " Timothea, 
mayest thou have eternal light in Christ.^^ In all, 
the body is in the grave, the spirit is with Christ ; all 
speak of the continued and unceasing life of the spirit. 

If the spirit of man be not coffined in the grave, 
where then is it ? Upon a question so vital and im- 
portant as the condition of those who have gone before 



34 in Paradise. 

us, and of the future that awaits us beyond the gate 

of death^ there are two authorities only ; 

1- TJie ^ the Word of God and the witness of the 
Spirit is in ^, , ,^, . ^ ^ . . , 

Paradise. Churcli. Ihe Yoice ot revelation is clear 

and distinct. At death the spirit passes to 
Paradise. We are shown this first in the case of our 
Lord. The passage in St. Peter's epistle so often quoted 
as to have become a locus dassicus : Christ " being 
put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit ; 
by which also He went and preached unto the spirits 
in prison.'^ We gather from this that Christ, after 
His death on Calvary, went in His spirit to the in- 
termediate place where were the spirits of men who 
had never heard the gospel, and there proclaimed the 
good news of salvation. The attempt has often been 
made to break the force of this passage, but the con- 
struction of the original Greek, and the almost con- 
sentaneous agreement of the early fathers, constrain 
us to this interpretation. To the same intermediate 
state points our Lord's reply on the cross to the peni- 
tent thief: " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Para- 
dise.'' Stirred by the unearthly grandeur of the 
Sufferer by his side, the better nature of the dying 
malefactor asserts itself, and in his newly-found peni- 
tence craves for some future blessing — to be remem- 
bered when He comes into His kingdom; but an 
immediate blessing is promised — that of being with 
Christ in Paradise before the sun should sink that day 
over Moriah's hill. Years roll by, and a later apostle. 



/// Paradise, 35 

one born out of due time^ tells us of a transcendent 
experience vouchsafed to himself: ^^I knew such a 
man (whether in the body or out of the body I can- 
not tell : God knoweth) how that he was caught up 
into Paradise^ and heard unspeakable words which it 
is not lawful for a man to utter/^ Still again the years 
roll by over the infant churchy until the last of the 
apostles is " in the spirit ^^ on the Isle of Patmos^ and 
is given a vision of the souls in the intermediate state : 
" I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that 
had been slain for the word of God and for the testi- 
mony which they held : and they cried with a great 
voice^ sayingj ' How long^ O Master^ the Holy and 
True^ dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on 
them that dwell on the earth?' ^^ Their impatience was 
appeased by the gift of '' a white robe/' and " it was 
said unto them that they should rest yet for a little 
while^ until their fellow-servants also and their breth- 
ren which should be killed^ even as they were^ should 
be fulfilled.'' From such concurrent testimony, jus- 
tified as it was by the similar belief of the Jewish 
Church, the truth at once sunk into the hearts of the 
early Christians that the soul at death passes into 
Paradise, an intermediate and not yet completed state 
of blessedness. 

In course of time, arose that article of the creed : 
" He descended into hell," an article which confesses 
upon every repetition of the creed our belief in Para- 
dise, yet an article frequently misunderstood and often 



^6 In Paradise. 

misleading, unless the reciter reads the prefatory note ; 

the words, He descended into hell, may be exchanged 

for the words, He went into the place of departed 

spirits, " which are considered as words of the same 

meaning in the creed /^ Thus truly and carefully, in 

accordance with Holy Writ and the testimony of early 

authors, does the Church teach that the spirit of man, 

at the moment of death, passes into Paradise, the 

place of departed spirits. 

It is erroneous to think and teach otherwise. It 

is erroneous to teach and think that the soul of the 

righteous dead passes at death into heaven. 

2. It IS not Yet how common is this error, to suppose 
m heaven. ^ ^ / ^^^ 

that the full fruition of a faithful life — 

man^s final and complete state of bliss, — is given at 
the moment of departure, is man's at once, as soon as 
he passes the trembling curtain that divides the un- 
seen from the seen. Popular language, of course, is 
not the justification of theology, nor the expression of 
truth ; but popular language may oftentimes reveal 
ignorance of fundamental Christian truth. And there 
can be from the Word of God nothing more sure and 
fundamental than that heaven is not the immediate 
gift of the faithful man when he dies. There is a 
way of speech about our friends : " He is in heaven — 
if ever man were in heaven, he is,'' and then, by 
placing heaven millions and millions of Jupiter-orbits 
aAvay, we manage to remove our loved ones at that 
distance from us, and in conditions where our hearts 



In Paradise, 37 

cannot reach them^ and tlie nearer comforts of Para- 
dise are lost ! " But why/^ some one may ask^ " are 
we not at liberty to say that heaven is the immediate 
reward of the blessed dead ? '' — scripture^ of necessity, 
being the only som^ce of information. In the first 
place because heaven is always represented as being 
the award of the day when Christ shall come to judg- 
ment. Taking the abbreviated passage of St. Mat- 
thew as an example : " When the Son of Man shall 
come in His glory . . . and before Him shall be 
gathered all nations, . . . then shall the King say 
unto them on His right hand, ' Come, ye blessed of 
My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the earth.^ ^^ The great last 
things which we must traverse in their proper order 
are given in scripture : we are to die ; then to be 
with Christ in Paradise ; then both the living and the 
dead — " those who are asleep and those who remain '^ 
are to be judged ; and then finally, after all these 
experiences J the blessed dead pass into heaven. Heaven, 
therefore, will be the reward of the faithful, not after 
death, but after judgment. There are many lines of 
thought that prove the same thing. For example, we 
know that not " anything that defileth ^^ nor that is 
evil or maketh evil shall enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. Take the case of a man whose life has been 
merged in sensuality, but who in the supreme hour of 
death undergoes remorse and receives pardon — have 
not the habits of his life crystallized into an essentially 



38 /;/ Paradise, 

evil character, and the climate of his soul become im- 
pure ? Shall he not need time to build up a new 
character on his penitence, to form new habits in the 
place of the old, to attune his spirit so as to be pre- 
pared for the harmonies of heaven ? Assuredly his 
penitence and pardon have disqualified him for hell, 
but have not yet cjualified liim for heaven ! We 
might make a broader generalization and say, few are 
the souls who have died in perfect holiness ; some evil 
stain flecks the purity of almost every life; many 
capacities are not yet large enough for the dimensions 
of the heavenly life. Yet heaven, we know, is the 
condition of perfect holiness where nothing evil can 
enter ; it follows, therefore, that the souls of men must 
tarry yet a little while in Paradise for higher lessons 
and education before they are fitted for supreme bliss. 
"We can think of a soul in Paradise as slowly devel- 
oped from '' whatever evil it may have contracted in 
the midst of this sinful world,^^ but in heaven we 
cannot think of evil at all. 

In accordance with this view heaven is always rep- 
resented as being, not only the condition of perfect 
holiness, without a shadow of evil, but 

f; -^^''^^?^^ also as the state of perfect bliss, without a 
the condi- ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ 

tion of strain of imperfection. But how is Para- 

blessedness. ^^^^ represented? A place of happiness 
undoubtedly ; of blessedness most as- 
suredly ; but not perfected and complete. '^ The souls 
under the altar '^ are crying " How long, O Master, 



In Paradise, 39 

the Holy and True/^ and are given ^^ white robes'^ 
in alleviation^ and told that the cycle of their waiting 
will not be complete until the faithful ones of earth 
shall have joined them. In the Epistle to the He- 
brews^ after the long calendar of the saints is conclud- 
ed^ this derogation from their perfect bliss is men- 
tioned : " These all^ having had witness borne to them 
through their faith^ received not the promise, God 
having provided some better things concerning us, 
that apart from us they should not be made perfect/^ 
These passages assure us that the living and the dead 
one communion make, and that the faithful dead with- 
out us shall not reach their final and perfect condition ; 
that heaven still lies before them on the horizon of the 
future; in a word, that the Church in Paradise is Ex- 
pectant — not yet Triumphant. Here as usual we con- 
firm our faith by the words of the creed, by the ex- 
ample of our Great Leader : " He descended into 
helP' (the place of departed spirits) — this indicates the 
first step of the celestial journey; ^^He ascended into 
heaven ^^ — this indicates the final stage of full fruition. 
Men, recognizing the force of these objections that 
heaven cannot be the immediate state of the soul after 

death, go sometimes to the other extreme 
4. The spirit and assert that the soul sleeps or is un- 
nor uncon- conscious between death and the judgment, 
scious. An old article of the Church declares: 

^' Tlie souls of them that depart this life 
do neither die with the bodies nor sleep idly. They 



40 /;/ Paradise. 

Avhich say that the souls of such as depart hence do 
sleep^ being without all sense^ feelings or perceiving 
until the day of judgment ... do utterly dissent 
from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture.'^ 
It has been the profound and tender thought of many 
nations to rob death of some of its terrors by speaking 
of it as sleep. The Hindoo worships Brahma " sleep- 
ing on the stars in immovable calm.^^ It was a 
favorite image with the Hebrew : 

" Of all the thoughts of God that are 

Borne inward unto souls afar, 

Along the Psalmist's music deep, 

Now tell me if that any is, * 

For gift or grace surpassing this : — 
' He giveth His Beloved sleep.' " 

Christ and His apostles caught up this use of the word 
and continued it. He says, " Our friend Lazarus is 
fallen asleep ; ^^ " The little maid is not dead but 
sleepeth.^^ St. Luke writes of Stephen that " he fell 
asleep.'^ St. Paul speaks often of those who ^^are 
asleep in Christ.'^ St. Peter writes of " the fathers 
who have fallen asleep.^^ It is a great thing that we 
arc permitted to take one of the dearest words in our 
language, associated as it is in every mind with rest, 
refreshment, and " tired nature's sweet restorer,'^ and 
under its soothing imagery to think of death ; but 
there should be no mistake in our apprehension of 
the image ; — it does not imply that there is any suspen- 
sion of consciousness in the souL Other scriptures 



In Paradise. 41 

assure us that the spirit in Paradise is possessed of all 
the elements of consciousness — memory^ sensibility to 
pain and pleasure ; that the life of men continues 
without interruption during the intermediate state. 
We have not many scenes photographed upon our 
hearts from behind the curtain of death ^ but such as 
we have point to the continued conscious life of the 
soul. In the mysterious scene of the Transfiguration^ 
Moses and Elijah appear upon the mount talking 
with the Lord — certainly they were not asleep and un- 
conscious. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, a 
dramatic scene is drawn of the conversation between 
the rich man and Abraham — certainly neither the 
sinner nor the saint was asleep and unconscious. In 
the visit made by our Lord to the spirits in prison 
when He brought to them the glad tidings of salva- 
tion, — assuredly it was not an unconscious audience 
to which He preached. In the cry of the wailing 
souls beneath the altar, the very intensity of their 
supplication to the Master witnesses that those expect- 
ant spirits were neither unconscious nor asleep. In 
the promise made to the penitent thief upon the cross 
that he should join Christ that day in Paradise is a 
guarantee that it was to no land of forgetfulness or 
unconscious sleep to which he was invited. In the 
longing of St. Paul to depart and be with Christ we 
may be sure that it was to no state of unconsciousness 
or inactivity that the eager heart of the apostle ex- 
pected to go. But enough ; memory, regret, love, 



42 In Paradise. 

fear^ hope^ all natural feelings remain to the spirits of 
the dead : they are fully conscious of themselves^ of 
their Redeemer^ and of all around them. It is into 
no cave^ like that which held the Seven Sleepers of 
Ephesus where they were quietly sleeping through 
the centuries^ we enter when death throws open for 
us the golden gate of Paradise. 

We have now seen that the soul does not pass into 
a state of unconsciousness ; we have previously proved 
that it does not enter into heaven at death, 
^f th ^ f^th ^^ return to our original statement that 
ers to the its first stage after separation from the 
ate state. " natural body will be Paradise or the inter- 
mediate state of spiritual activity. Such 
has always been the belief of the church from the 
earliest times. TertuUian asks^ " How shall the soul 
mount up to heaven where Christ is already sitting 
at the right hand of the Father^ when as yet the arch- 
angePs trumphet has not been heard by the command 
of God ? To no one is heaven opened ; when the 
world shall pass away^ then the kingdom of heaven 
shall be opened.'^ Origen writes^ ^^Xot even the apos- 
tles have yet received their joy^ but even they are wait- 
ing in order that I too may become a partaker of their 
joy. For the saints departing hence do not immedi- 
ately receive all the rewards of their deserts ; but they 
wait even for us, though we be loitering and dilatory/^ 
— and then he quotes that passage from the Hebrews, 
" they without us shall not be made perfect.^^ Justyn 



In Paradise, 43 

Martyr goes very far in condemning the view that 
men go to heaven at death : '' If you have fallen in 
with any persons called Christians who say that the 
souls of the dead at the time of their death are taken 
up to heaven^ do not regard them as Christians/^ An 
almost unbroken line of testimony embracing writers 
of such different schools as Justyn and Ireneus, Clem- 
ent and Origen on the one side, TertuUian and Cyril 
of Jerusalem on the other, describes the Lord's descent 
to Hades as a visit to spirits in the intermediate state ; 
there was also the universal custom of prayers for the 
progress in purity of the souls of the departed ; all of 
this testimony conclusively proving that the early 
Christians believed that at death the spirits of men 
went to Paradise, and not to heaven. Not even the 
heathen, so far as the current mythology gained hold 
of the popular imagination, were without a similar 
belief. In the 6th book Virgil writes : 

** When life is o'er, and man's last hour has come, 
Not even then does evil cease to harm, 
Nor are the taints of death cleansed all at once ; 
Tt needs must be that much will linger still, 
Through o'erlong use, in fashion wonderful. 
Some few to the Elysian plains pass on, 
And dwell in fields of blessing, till at last 
When the full time is come, the long, long day 
Has cleansed each deep-dyed stain, and leaves the soul 
Ethereal, pure, the immaterial fire." 

We rest upon solid foundation when we think of 



44 In Paradise, 

those " we have loved and lost awhile ^^ as denizens 
of the world of Paradise. It is needless 
Conclusion, now to calculate how much reality and 
consolation has been lost to the Christian 
hearty by losing from its faith the belief of the Saints 
in Paradise^ where not yet perfected they are waiting 
for us who remain on earth that together we may be 
prepared for the final beatific vision of God, Paradise 
seems^ by comparison with heaven^ near at hand^ sep- 
arated from us by only a trembling curtain ; and for 
them^ as for ourselves^ it is both our duty and our 
privilege to pray that '' together with them we may 
finally be partakers of the Heavenly Kingdom/^ 



IV. 

THE ACTIVITIES OF PARADISE. 

1 John 3:2. *' We know that we shall be like Him, for we shall 
see Him even as He is." 

bfjiOLOL avTcp ioofiE'&a 

WE have seen from scripture that the conscious 
life of the soul continues after death, that 
man does not enter upon a sleep through the centuries 
to be awakened at last by the trumpet of judgment. 
Man has merely laid aside his earthly 

What are tabernacle, the residence of his soul durino; 
the activities ^ - ^ ^ ^ ^ 

of tlie inter- his earthly pilgrimage, and continues man, 

state. with all the faculties that belong to con- 

scious life. All the scenes presented to 
us show us man in the possession and employment of 
these powers of the soul. The souls beneath the altar 
with the cry of human impatience upon their lips ; 
Dives and Lazarus w^ith the memory of other days 
and occupations the subject of their interview; the 
penitent thief with the fulfilled promise of Christ^s 
presence as the reward of his penitence and the pledge 
of his forgiveness ; the apostle Paul caught up to hear 
the unutterable words of Paradise so that he longs to 
depart and be with Christ ; the spirits in prison with 



46 In Paradise. 

the expectation of a better hope as the result of 
Christ's preaching to the dead ; Moses and Elijah, 
men of older davs^ with their interest and their pro- 
phecy of the demise of the Lord upon the cross ; all 
are so many exhibitions of the conscious life which is 
running on behind the vaih Souls^ then^ are con- 
scious : it follows next to ask^ What are the activities 
of men in the intermediate state? 

There is nothing in death to break the law of con- 
tinuity and to involve the cessation by the soul of all ' 

active and energetic life. It is the sepa- 
Conscious ration from the man of his outer equip- 
progress. ment : the taking away ^' the garments 
by the soul laid by/^ and folding them for 
interment on the shelves of the tomb ; but it is noth- 
ing more. Up to the moment of sejDaration the man 
has been a willing^ thinkings loving being ; after that 
moment^ with more perfect equipment, he continues 
the same active and energetic play of human faculties. 
We can love and think and will, undergo hope, ex- 
pectation and joy, as easily for an eternity as for a 
brief three score years and ten. New organs might 
be required, but no new faculties for the execution of 
the design. Man then by the act of death stands 
stripped of his bodily nature, but conscious, with his 
spiritual powers intact and unimpaired. But all 
conscious life involves progress or — it may be — retro- 
gression. ]\Ian has not been made perfect in this 
world ; perfection and holiness are almost impossible 



The Activities of Paradise, 47 

attainments for him in this life. " On the supposi- 
tion that there is no change nor progress in the inter- 
mediate state^ then it follows that there is a long 
period in which the operations of God^s spirit are 
suspended, and an imperfect soul is left to stagnate in 
its imperfection/^ and so not fitted at last to enter 
heaven unless made perfect by a fiat of omnipotent 
will, wiping away all remaining evil. But this is 
unworthy to be believed in comparison with the truth 
that the soul of man progresses to purity through the 
activities of Paradise. Progress is the law of life 
written everywhere by the hand of God. We can 
think of no object, unless dead, inanimate matter, 
which is not passing through its cycles of progress ; 
and even the dead, inanimate creation of rock and 
stone, hillside and valley, through the centuries of 
evolution have progressed from tlie poison-breeding 
climate of the carboniferous age down to the pleasant 
landscapes that are fitted for man's abode. And of 
history, and ethics, and men's moral movements, the 
trend has ever been from the lower to the higher, as 
if all nature was imbosomed by " a power that makes 
for righteousness.'' Given conscious life, the result 
must ever be progress. Therefore the conception of 
'' a state in which the soul being conscious, must re- 
main absolutely in the same ethical state as that in 
which it left the body, contradicts all the analogies of 
nature, as it does those scripture which are the basis 
of the belief of Christendom." David, with no 



48 /;/ Paradise, 

Christian illumination of Paradise^ could yet say t 
" tliey go from strength to strength until before the 
God of gods appeareth every one of them in Zion." 
St. Paul — we must notice this distinction — made the 
coming of Christy not the advent of death^ the limit 
of the progressive work in the soul. He writes to 
the Philippians of his confidence that " He which 
began a good work in you will perfect it until the day 
of Jesus Ckrist^^ He prays on behalf of the Thessa- 
lonians that ^' their whole spirit and soul and body 
be preserved blameless unto the Coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ^^ He begs the Corinthians to wait " for 
the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ "Who shall 
confirm you unto the end that ye may be unreprove- 
able in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ — their de- 
velopment was to continue uninterruptedly unto the 
advent of Christ. There is therefore wonderful sig- 
nificance in the fact that from the scriptural point of 
view^ death interrupts nothing of the ethical develop- 
ment of the soul^ but that it progresses unto ^^the 
day of Christ.^^ 

Practically considered^ this continued progress is 
what we would wish for and expect. Take the aver- 
age condition of Christian men and women 

The aver- ^^ ^j-^^ hour of their translation. AYhile 
age condi- 
tion of their capacities differ as ^' one star differeth 

at death. from another star in glory ^^ and their de- 
grees of merit vary from those ^^ who liave 
borne the heat and burden of the day ^^ to those ^^ who 



The Activities of Paradise, 49 

have worked but one hour/^ still it is no insult to the 
best and noblest of humanity to say that stains cling 
to the very best of God's saints — stains of evil even 
when the sin has been forgiven. With these marks 
of human weakness upon them they enter Paradise. 
It will not be God's way in Paradise^ as it is not His 
way on earthy to force men into goodness by an act 
of omnipotent will. Moral laws work on wdth ter- 
rible exactness. Into the new conditions we carry 
ourselves — '' selves which must be affected most im- 
portantly by the transition^ but which cannot in the 
nature of things^ lose their individuality^ or change 
instantly their ethical status.'' There remains^ there- 
fore^ the necessity for that progressive sanctification^ 
of which scripture speaks. 

Convinced by all these considerations that we enter 
at death upon a course of new and greater develop- 
ment^ we ask again^ What are these activities and en- 
ergies of the soul in the intermediate state ? 

Details are not given to us ; but just iii proportion 

as it is wrong and irreverent to seek for details which 

have not been revealed^ in that proportion is it wise 

for us to seek to know most clearly what 

General Christ has seen fit to reveal. Many have 
outlines, ^ ^ *^ ^ 

not details, been the irreverent fancies of men '' rushing 

revealed. ^^ where angels fear to tread/' but these 

extravagances and misstatements on so 

sweet and solemn a subject should not prevent us 

from meditating upon the great and comforting truths 



50 In Paradise. 

which are clearly declared. ^^ Let iis/^ says another, 
" guard against what is not true ; but no mistakes, 
no misconceptions, need force us to maintain this 
heartless, this almost Pagan silence/^ The whole 
outer environment of the future life is unknown to us, 
as the stars and flowers Avhich soon shall meet its 
gaze are to the unborn babe ; but the secrets of its 
inner life are not so hidden from our hearts : 

^' Far out of sight while sorrows still enfold us, 
Lies the fair country where our hearts abide ; 
And of its bliss is naught more wondrous told us 
Than these few words, ^ I shall be satisfied/ " 

The first great truth is that the spirits of men in 
Paradise shall be with Christ. From His last prayer 
on earth, '' Father, I will that they whom Thou hast 
given Me be with Me wliere I am,^^ and 
1. The spirit from His last promise on earth, '' To-day 
Christ. shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,^^ as- 

suredly we gather the certainty of this 
truth. It is almost enough to pause right here and 
rest in the blessedness of this assurance. But let us 
go further and see what it implies. Those to whom 
this promise is given are the same as when summoned 
by the angel of death ; they have the same human 
hearts and faculties ; they have the same longings 
after goodness, the same aspirations after perfection ; 
the same ideal of perfect truth and duty hangs before 
their eyes ; the same hatred of evil and impurity ; the 
same capability of remorse and shame when the ideal 



The Activities of Paradise. 51 

is unattained^ and the good that is known is left un- 
done ; in fact^ the same individuality with its 

" bursts of great heart, and slips in sensual mire ; " 

in fact^ the same man enmeshed so strangely in many 
evil things^ yet longing so heartily and struggling so 
earnestly after the model left by his Lord. And 
Christ is also the same^ He has not changed since 
He walked upon earth in the limited area of Pales- 
tine^ binding up the wounds of sin and sorrow ; im- 
placable towards nothing save the evil deeds of cruelty 
and hypocrisy^ scathing these with the lightning of 
His look while He bent a tender glance upon the sin 
that was frail but penitent ; gathering up the little 
ones into His arms and blessing ; stopping the pro- 
cession of human sorrow that He might restore the 
lost to the embrace of bereaved affection ; bidding 
human grief to overflov/ in tears that it might have 
relief; discerning the subtlest necessity of every soul 
to express its love in measure however small; in 
every thought and word and deed '^ doing good ^^ that 
no reed however bruised should be crushed^ and no 
flickering wick go out in the boisterous wind of hu- 
man judgment ; the same Christ in Paradise as He 
was at Jacobus well^ or on the temple's marble floor 
where the adulteress sobbed out the story of her 
shame ; or best of all^ as He was upon the cross of 
Calvary during the three hours of Plis agony. What- 
ever those words may mean which speak of a time 



52 In Paradise, 

when the Son shall give up His kingdom into the 
hands of His Father that God " may be all in all ^^ — 
and this is not the place to attempt their explanation 
— Christ during the intermediate state will be the 
same human Christ who walked in Jewry. Thus the 
soul of man and the human Christ will be the same ; 
only the conditions of the paradisaical life will be new 
and more favorable to progress. " We shall see Him 
just as He is'^ — a vision never vouchsafed to His 
first disciples^ because their dreams of an earthly 
kingdom were forever disturbing their pure enjoyment 
of His presence and their clear comprehension of His 
words ; and never given to us because every age has 
had its own ideal of Christ and the true ideal has 
only been partially revealed to any age. Men at no 
time during the Christian cycle have seen Him just 
as He is^ but that vision will be the first and primal 
bliss of the saints in Paradise. At the time of that 
pure and perfect vision the world will have sunk out 
of sight ; the pressure exerted by its manifold attrac- 
tions will have ceased ; the desires entertained by men 
for its fugitive pleasures will have cooled ; the vail 
between the soul and the world — obscuring its vanity^ 
and the vail between the soul and Christ— hiding His 
supernal loveliness as the '' one altogether lovely ^^ 
will have been rent in twain^ and there will remain 
"- face to face ^^ but these two^ the soul completely re- 
vealed^ and the Christy perfectly discerned. The 
results of this presence of the spirit of man with 



The Activities of Paradise, 53 

Christ must be twofold : a keener hatred and aban- 
donment of evil ; a clearer knowledge and adoption 
of good. The faithful have this double side of their 
nature here on earth ; they hate evil but not strongly 
and persistently enough ; they love good but not 
earnestly and absolutely enough. But there^ the perfect 
presence of Christ Avill work a change ; certain results, 
it would seem, must naturally take place under the 
new conditions of the intermediate life. Removed 
from all the warping judgments of the world the soul 
will, in the presence of Christ, clearly know itself and 
its Saviour. Evil seen in the clear light of His per- 
fect purity and love will seem more loathsome, and 
as a result there will be, there must be, as an indis- 
pensable condition of the souFs closing with its past 
and entering upon the new life of holiness and good- 
ness, a genuine and wholesome act of repentance and 
shame. Forgiven by the same love that bore so 
gently the infirmities of His chosen apostles, the spirit, 
with a memory that has lost its bitterness, humbled 
and strengthened, will start with greater capacity upon 
its career of increasing purity. We must not shrink 
from an act of penitence as part of the work of the 
intermediate state — there is nothing more health-giv- 
ing to the souls of men than their states of genuine 
repentance. All new life takes its start in the sense 
and shame of failure. But if our Lord's presence 
operates thus with respect to the evil that is left in 
His saints, how much more does that presence act 



54 In Paradise, 

upon the germs of goodness which they bring with 
them to Paradise. Ah^ here it is^ indeed^ 
Christ's ^^unutterable words/^ as the apostle de- 
devXps clared^ that we might speak. As the gar- 
goodness, ment^^that whitens in the sun grows pure 
by being purely shone upon/^ so the spirit 
of the saint with Christ Who is the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, Avill doubtless develop all its latent powers of 
truth and holiness. With larger knowledge of divine 
truth, will come nobler conceptions of duty ; with 
the benediction of His encouragement and love, will 
be greater accomplishments of the truth that is known. 
Capacities for all good will grow '' with w^hat they are 
fed upon.^^ '' That earnestness of desire, that strength 
of pure affection, that nobility of aim, that harmony 
and sweetness of nature,'^ discerned in their earthly 
life by the eye of love, passing into Paradise will be 
developed by the presence of Christ. Thus upon the 
double side of human nature the communion with 
Christ will work its healing work — healing and cur- 
ing the plague-spots of still abiding sin, stimulating 
and developing the germinal tendencies of good. 

As a second truth which is the result of the jfirst, 

the soul shall be '' like ChristJ^ ^' We know that we 

shall be like Him,'^ says St. John. With 

2. The spirit wonder and amazement we have often, 
shan be like ^ . ^ i t • /> -^^ ^ 

Christ. durnig the weakness and mnrmities ot our 

earthly lives, heard those commands, '^ to 

be perfect as He is perfect, holy as He is holy, pure 



The Activities of Paradise. 55 

as He is pure/^ We have passed them over as the 
words of an optimist who did not understand the dif- 
ficuhies of human struggle or the obstacles to mortal 
attainment. But here the statement appears again as 
the final aim of the intermediate life. A word is 
needed to explain ; there is a divine order and a hu- 
man ; to us can never be the perfection of that heav- 
enly order ; but it is possible for us to be like Christy 
that is^ — as He is perfect in His heavenly kind^ so it 
may be permitted the saints to be perfect in their 
human kind. In a word humanity may shake off 
its imperfection and reach the ideal of humanity as it 
lay in the divine mind ; and Paradise is the scene of 
the progress which leads up to this result. If ever 
there has come to us the longings in the midst of fiery 
temptations^ to stand scathless and untouched^ like 
Christ in the wilderness ; if ever the desire to move 
undismayed to our chosen purpose of truth^ like Christ 
before Pilate ; if ever the wish to submit wholly and 
unreservedly to the better will of God^ like Christ in 
Gethsemane ; if ever the prayer for the patience and 
courage to be undisturbed amid the storms of calumny 
and injustice^ like Christ before the Sanhedrin ; if 
ever the wish possesses us for the perfect trust that 
can stand hopefully before death^ like Christ upon the 
cross^ if ever the aspiration for that perfect consecra- 
tion that passes through the scenes of life without evil 
in thought or deed, like Christ in His entire life on 
earth ; we are told, we are assuredly promised, that 



56 /// Paradise. 

these longings shall be gratified in Paradise^ and we 

in very truth '' shall be like Him/^ 

Scripture speaks of the method of obtaining this 

Christ-likeness under the general image and language 

of purification. Souls who " die in the 

3. The ^ Lord ^^ die in very different stages of like- 
method is by ^ ^^. , . 1,1 .,. -, 
purification, ness to Hnxi ; there is much to be punned 

away before they are ready for the beatific 
vision. Because others have corrupted the purification 
of the intermediate state into a doctrine of Purgatory 
with masses^ — that is no reason for us to leave the 
plain teaching of scripture and the early Church. 
The 2 2d article speaks only of ^^the Romish doc- 
trine concerning Purgatory as a fond things vainly 
invented and grounded upon no warranty of scrip- 
ture ; ^^ it does not refer to an intermediate state of 
purification. Fire and flame^ w^hich we have filled 
with such terrible associations^ were the favorite images 
of purification ; — fire so imaged from its purifying 
and refining work on metals, purging away the dross 
and leaving pure the silver and the gold. " Fire/^ 
says one of the fathers^ " purifies not flesh, but sinful 
souls.^^ '' All must be passed through fire/^ says 
another, " as many as desire to return to Paradise ^^ — 
" every one shall be salted with fire,^^ said Christ. 
" One sliall be tried as silver/^ says a third, " I as 
lead, I shall burn till the lead melts away.^^ Their 
language was only the continuation of the imagery of 
scripture. Christ had been foretold as One Who 



The Activities of Paradise. 57 

should sit as the refiner and purifier of silver ; He 
was to baptize with the cleansing element of fire ; God 
Himself was imaged as ^^a consuming fire;^^ the Holy 
Spirit descended with tongues of fire^ as figures of His 
sanctifying work ; St Paul drawls back the curtain 
and shows us ending fire testing every man's work of 
what sort it is^ burning up all evil in the foundation of 
his life^ but the man himself '' saved so as by fire/' 
There can be no mistaking the meaning wrapped up 
in this image. The whole heathen world with their 
rites in which fire played so important a part could 
readily understand this figure of speech. Sometimes 
the image is dropped and its equivalent term " suiFer- 
ing '' is employed : He made " the Captain of their 
salvation perfect througli suffering ; '' St. Peter in- 
vokes '' the God of all grace^ afler that ye have suf- 
fered awhile^ to make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, 
settle you.'' Says a thoughtful writer, '^ we may well 
believe that a deepening and more thorough penitence, 
arising from a clear knowledge of the dreadfulness of 
sin, and the goodness and love of God, is among the 
exercises of the blessed who are preparing for the final 
vision. Doubtless to the pardoned there are clinging 
many ' remnants of sin,' to clear away every shadow 
of which will be one work of infinite mercy in the 
mysterious dwelling-place of the blessed dead." Mar- 
tensen, a great authority in theology, writes : '' Since 
no soul leaves this state of being in a fully concluded 
and finished condition, the middle state must be con- 



68 /;/ Paradise. 

sidered as a realm of continued development^ wherein 
souls may be prepared^ and ripen for the last judg- 
ment. Although the (Roman) Catholic doctrine of 
purgatory is rejected^ because it is mixed up with so 
much that is harsh and false^ it contains nevertheless 
the truth that the intermediate state^ in a purely 
spiritual sense^ must be a purgatory determined for 
the purifying of the soul/' 

That the spirits of men in Paradise are icith Christ 
and have the perfect enjoyment of His presence ; that 
they are purified till they become more 
Conclusion, and more like Christ] that in this puri- 
fication there is rest, there is blessedness, 
that God's mercy continues its cleansing work ; that 
there is suffering involved, but the blessed suffering 
that brings peace and consolation to the j)enitent soul, 
not the bitter suffering of earth — these are the truths 
alike of scripture and the church. Taught by them 
we cast into that future life every earnest aspiration ; 
'' we borrow from memory its peaceful retrospect, fi'om 
conscience its emotions of satisfied duty, from reason 
its delightful perceptions of truth, from affection and 
faith the repose of human sympathy and the glow of 
divine aspiration ; and combining them into one full 
thought glorified by the element of eternity, we see 
before us the Paradise of our hopes.^^ 



V. 

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SAINTS. 

I. John 1:7. " We have fellowship one with another." 
KOLVG)viav exofiev fier' aXXriAdyv 

WHETHER love is eternal^ whether the objects 
of our love are given us for eternity as well 

as for time, whether the sweet ties of 
Importance home and of friendship shall be continued 
question. in the life beyond the grave, whether 

there shall be recognition and relationship 
between the loved ones of earth, whether the fellow- 
ship of saints shall be more vivid or more faint, are 
questions which have never ceased to possess the keen- 
est interest for the children of men ; nor will ever 
cease to be of the most vital importance, as long as 
human affections remain as they are. It is when we 
love, but cannot love without fear of loss; when ^Sve 
cling so passionately to what we must lose so certainly, 
and may lose so suddenly and so soon ; while love 
continues the most imperious passion, and death the 
surest fact, of our mingled and marvellous humanity,^^ 
that the heart has a terrible stake in existence, and 
questions of the future relationship between ourselves 



()0 In Paradise. 

and the objects of our love have a passionate interest 
for the tender and loving of earth. The only re- 
source for a man without faith in the future continu- 
ance of these relations^ is to be also without love. 
For to stand upon the shore of the ocean of the Pres- 
ent and see treasure after treasure thrown into its 
insatiable waste^ the richest spoils of the hearty and to 
discern nothing of their future welfare ; to behold all 
the delights of new and fresh affections^ our homes 
and all their precious contents slipping into the gulf 
of darkness^ without one ray of hope spanning the 
dreary gloom^ is to argue for man a lot less envi- 
able than the beasts of the field^ who neither know 
the delight of loving nor the agony of loss. 

Scripture comes to our aid with the assurance 
that the Communion of Saints grows more 

K^cnpture strong; and real in the life bevond, than in 
asserts a p ^ . 

closer com- the life before^ the grave. " If we walk in 

Paradise. "^^^^ ^^^^j ^^ He is in the light^ we have 
fellowship one with another and the blood 
of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.'^ This^ 
upon its surface^ is the assertion of a present fellow- 
ship ; but^ in its analysis^ it states an undying and an 
increasing fact In proportion as we advance more 
and more in likeness to Christy and more increasingly 
walk in the element of that light in which He is, in 
that proportion are we cleansed more and more from 
sin, and light being increased to each and sin being 
removed, our fellowship with one another grows 



The Fellowship of the Saints, 61 

more close and vital. The communion between the 
living and the living is only one step towards that be- 
tween the living and the dead ; and this in turn is 
but a faint horoscope of that communion between the 
Saints in Paradise. Here evidently are three stages, 
through which let us trace the ever deepening and 
ever increasing Fellowship of the Saints. 

And, first, the Jellowship we have with one another 
on earth. Our affections are the chief 
1. The Fel- thing of value about us, and almost the 
the living, only genuine, certainly the supreme, hap- 
piness of men flows from the movement of 
these affections. Even in an age like ours when 
wealth and luxury have done much to corrupt the 
simple source of human happiness, home and friend- 
ship still retain their pre-eminent place in the hearts 
of men. The healthy type of a true home and love 
still remains with us. There may be many ^* counter- 
feit presentments^^ of home, there may be much that 
is conventional enforced upon us by the fashion of 
the time; but still where the ties of a sincere and re- 
fined attachment bind us to the sanctuary where our 
loved ones are; ^^ where the sympathies of those who 
share Avith us that home have become as the needful 
light to our daily toil, and the guardian spirits of our 
nightly rest ; where years have passed on and brought 
us many a sickness banished by their fidelity, many a 
danger averted by their counsel, many an anxiety 
rendered tolerable by their participation ; where often 



62 In Paradise. 

they, too, have gazed upon us from the bed of pain and 
threatened to depart, but we have been permitted to 
rescue them from the grave, and therein have doubled 
all our tenderness; where from this close inspection 
of pure hearts, we have learned to think nobly of 
human nature, and hopefully of the providence of 
God; where their voices, common enough to other 
ears, have become to us the natural music of the 
earth,^^ — there abides the true fellowship of the living 
and the true happiness of man. Home, mother, wife, 
child, are words of infinite meaning to the heart : with 
them are associated the cleej^est joys life has to give. 
In communion with them, the burdens of life lose 
half their bitterness, and the joys of life shine with 
double lustre. And yet it is no disloyalty to these 
deepest aiiections of the soul of man, to say that we 
know, by many evidences, that they are not on earth 
in their most perfect and complete form. The con- 
verse between loving hearts, full of peace and comfort 
as it is, is seen in many ways to be only germinal; 
only at the beginning of that relationship which is 
destined to grow yet deeper and deeper. In the 
present life there are secrets in every heart, hidden 
even from its closest mate. Vails drop down between 
the fellowship of kindred minds so that 

" Not even the dearest heart and next our own, 
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh." 

The body is such a poor interpreter of the soul with- 



The Feltowship of the Saints, 63 

in; as it smiles or frowns, clasps hands in warmth or 
coldness, it does not always speak the language of the 
heart. Years of association with some loved object 
may make us quick to read its every lineament, yet 
accustomed as affection is to read the signs upon the 
familiar dial plate, it is often mistaken and led away 
by the language of the body : 

" We live together years and years 

And leave unsounded still, 
Each other's springs of hopes and fears, 

Each other's depths of will. 
We live together day by day, 

And some chance look or tone, 
Lights up with instantaneous ray 

An inner world unknown." 

The poor interpreting power of the body, the poverty 
of speech and gesture and action to express the full- 
ness of the heart, is one obstacle to perfect communion 
on earth; the imperfections and sins which cling to 
and are a necessary condition of souls in a state of 
progress, is another vail between the spirits of 
men. We know, as the years pass, and sins and 
imperfections are done away by the grace of Christ, 
that misunderstandings grow less, and the communion 
of hearts grows closer and strongero The deepening 
of human fellowship and friendship by the passage of 
the years ; the arrival at that rare and sweet com- 
munion where, without the spoken word, spirits un- 
derstand each other; this close interchange of love 



64 in Paradise. 

and sympathy, as each shakes off the clogs and im- 
perfections that impeded growth^ this is one of the 
most certain facts, as it is one of the happiest condi- 
tions in human life. This points and prophecies of 
the condition, in which souls growing more pure and 
holy in themselves, enter more intimately and com- 
pletely into fellowship with one another. Our human 
companionship on earth, then, while it is the source 
of our purest joy, confesses itself incomplete and points 
to a deeper fellow^ship that is to be. 

Death enters this happy estate, and the home is 
broken, the family parted, the friendship shivered, and 
we have now to consider another stage : the fellowship 
of the living and the dead. We cannot dwell together 
in the same home without the expectation 
II. The Fel- that its communion so sweet and sacred 
thl Uvw shall some day be broken ; we know that 
and the dead, the pendulum " which at every stroke car- 
ries a mortal agony through fifty homes 
will some hour strike for us a mutual and mortal 
farewell ; ^^ ^^the procession of dear events ^^ which has 
become the constant imagery of our daily life ^^ shall 
suddenly be arrested by a tomb.'^ All who live in 
this mortal scene have more than one dear blessing of 
the heart, parent, wife, or child, who has slipped from 
the sweet communion of the home on earth to the 
deeper communion of tlie home beyond the grave. 
The eager desire of men in every land has ever asked 
concernino; their welfare ; their sacred books are 



The Fellowship of the faints. 65 

mostly the answers men have given to this impor- 
tunate question of the human heart. The Christian 
answer seems most perfect and complete. That it 
leaves undetermined the time and place of this re- 
union ; that it tells us it shall be ^^ hereafter/^ but does 
not tell us when it shall be ; that it calls it '^ Paradise/^ 
but does not tell us where it is ; that it changes its 
scenery^ from a city with gates of pearl and golden 
pavements to rural scenes with shady groves and run- 
ning brooks, does not detract from the power and 
comfort of the Christian's hope. As one has beauti- 
fully said : " Come where and when it may, after 
years or ages, in the nearest or the furthest regions of 
God's universe, it passes across our minds the vision 
of reunion ; it opens a niche in the crypt of the affec- 
tions where the images of household affection may 
stand, and gaze with placid look at the homage of our 
sorrow, till they light up again with life and fall 
into our arms once more. It matters little at 
what point in the perspective of the future the 
separation enforced by death is thought to cease. 
Faith and love are careless time-keepers ; they have 
a wide and liberal eye for distance and duration ; 
and while they can whisper to each other the 
words, ^^Meet again,'' they can watch and toil with 
wondrous patience, with spirit fresh and true, and, 
amid its most grievous loneliness, unberefl of one 
good sympathy." 

The Christian answer, although it leaves undeter- 



66 In Paradise. 

mined so much we crave to know^ seems^ I say^ so 
perfect and complete. 

It changes the whole trend of our tJiought In re- 
calling our minds from the grave which 

1. Changes holds the body, to Paradise which receives 
trend of our ^^^^ loved one himself, it does away with 
thought. c^\ i(]ga of any annihilation even for a 

moment of the conscious soul ; it denies to 
death all power to cancel life, and reduces it simply 
to a migration of the soul ; it is, indeed, '' God^s 
method of colonization/^ We can wait for it, there- 
fore, not Avith passionate hate, as an envious clutch at 
our happiness from beneath, but with quiet reverence, 
as a message from above : not '^ a fiendish hand of 
darlmess '^ to interrupt a loved fellowship on earth, 
but a simple suggestion to enjoy that fellowship from 
a new and richer point of view. It supplies to its a 

more vivid felloivship, even though for a 

2. Suggests time invisible. It calls us apart for a little 
a more , ., i pp r> • o 
intimate while to see the eitect oi separation, bo 

fellowship limited and imperfect is communion 

even though ^ 

invisible. througli the eye, the ear, the lip, that it 

separates us for a brief time that we may 
realize that the richest communion is that commerce of 
mind with mind, and of heart with heart : that invis- 
ible and unconscious communion, by vfhich the higher 
elements of our nature at last grasp the nobler ele- 
ments of theirs ; recall and hold commerce with all 
their thoughts, noble impulses, and grand affections. 



The Felloljoship of the Saints, 6? 

which were for a time too much obscured by the too 
obtruding pressure of bodily life. In a word^ Death 
puts both— the living and the dead — in a quiet wait- 
ing and preparatory room^ for a few years of separa- 
tion^ that both may learn better of each other's inner 
life^ and learnings may be prepared for the perfect 
fellowship to come later in their reunion. And so^ 
in thinking of those who have been taken from earth- 
ly fellowship with us^ we shall think truly^ only when 
we think of them and of ourselves as now in spirit 
and mind-communion. 

It substitutes moral and spiritual contiguity for 
physical. It is true that they have passed 

3. Puts from p:rasp of hand and sflance of eye; 

moral and . . . 

spiritual and this is terrible to the mother who 

for^ physical, ^^isses the hourly care of her babe^ and to 
the husband bereft of the tender guardian- 
ship over his wife ; but scripture in many ways tries 
to w^ean our thoughts from this physical nearness to a 
contiguity that may still be ours. While separated 
from sight^ both may be engaged in the same moral 
and spiritual tasks. By calling the living and the 
dead ^^the whole family of God'' scripture shows 
that a true communion still continues ; by speaking 
of Paradise^ where imperfect things may enter^ and 
not of heaven^ where only the perfect can gain admis- 
sion^ it holds both in the same spiritual plane; by 
telling us that '' they without us shall not be made 
perfect/' spirits there and spirits here are gathered into 



68 In Paradise, 

one great fraternity of souls; ^^ worlds above and 
worlds below ; mansions are they all of the great 
Father's house ; '^ by calling the spirits in Paradise 
the " Church Expectant/' and not the Church Tri- 
umphant^ it reveals them to be^ like ourselves^ In the 
same attitude of waiting. The force of all these sug- 
gestions is that the loved ones of Paradise are in 
moral and spiritual touch with us ; that they are not 
transmuted into angels (as some without warrant of 
scripture allege)^ and so removed into a new order of 
being away from all possibility of sympathy ; nor are 
they exalted into perfect and glorified beings noio, 
away from all sympathy with us and beyond the 
grasp of our affection. 

Instead of this removal into a new order of beings 

or exaltation of them in the same order to an infinite 

height beyond us^ it shoivs a similar icork of sanctifica- 

tion. As beneath the beneficent presence 

4. Shows a q|» Christ they s^row purified and like 
similar work ^ fe r 

of ^ Him ; their " tears unwept^ as it were^ be- 

tion. foi'^ ^^^ smile of the Redeemer ; their 

plaints unsung amid the harmonies of 
Paradise; their sins untwined by the wounding yet 
healing hand of an angel penitence;'' so the hearts of 
men on earthy by the help of the same Redeemer, by 
the thought that their eye of love is still upon us, and 
their voice, ^^ though dead," still speaks in the inner 
recess of conscience, purify and prepare themselves for 
the final reunion. ^^Tell me," says a bereaved heart," 



The Fellowship of the Saints, 69 

" tliat I shall stand face to face with the sainted dead ; 
and whenever it may be^ shall I not desire to be 
ready^ and to meet them with clear eye and spirit 
unabaslied? Shall I not feel that to forget them 
were a mark of a nature base and infidel ? — that un- 
der whatever pleasant shelter I may rest^ and over 
whatever wastes I may wander as a wayfarer in life, 
I must bear their image next my heart; like the exile 
of old flying with his household gods hidden in his 
mantle's secret folds ?'^ It is a comfort to feel that 
we are engaged in the same moral and spiritual work 
— that as we persevere on earth in the difficult task 
of self-conquest, we are rising more and more into the 
same spiritual atmosphere with them, preparing for 
the perfect and complete fellowship of Paradise. 

Scripture, and on some points, the early Church, 

bear witness to even more conclusive signs of the 

communion between earth and Paradise. 

5. Keveals j^ speaks of their interest and intercession 

their interest ■'- *^ 

and ^ for US, " Seeing we are compassed about 

intercession .,^ , i i /? 'i 

for us. ^^itn SO great a cloud oi witnesses 

let us run with patience the race that is 
set before us.'^ With a bold figure the apostle sees 
us toiling in the weary race of life, and above us the 
ranks of saints, like tier upon tier in an amphitheatre, 
looking down upon us in our mortal struggles. 
Since they are the same who helped us in many a 
critical hour of life, we may be sure tliat it is no un- 
sympathetic glance they cast upon our affairs. Their 



70 /;/ Paradise. 

own earthly experience gave them the knowledge 
with which they can sympathize with those who are 
below. They^ too^ have known what doubt^ and 
struggle, and trials, and temptations are ; now they 
are risen above the storm cloud and the fog, rejoicing 
in the pure light above ; they know what it is to 
suifer, they know what it is to find in Paradise the 
balm for suffering ; this enriches and vivifies and 
kindles their thought and sympathy toward us. 
Thus they are not gone — no, not gone. Those Avho 
from the Presence of Christ look out on this motley 
and varied scene of human life — father, mother, hus- 
band, wife and child — are within the sound of our 
voice, the reach of our thought, the grasp of our love ; 
are a thousand times nearer to us during the period 
of separation than when they lived beneath the same 
roof with us ; for '^ it is soul-nearness, not bodily 
propinquity, that makes the heart and kernel of all 
true fellowship.'^ If in hours of deep emotion we 
seem to hear their voice urging us to shun some keen 
temptation ; if at times the voice of Mother seems to 
fill our hearts with inspiration; if in moments of 
worldly anxiety the hands of little children seem to 
draw us back to " innocency of life and constancy of 
faith ; '^ if the sturdy heroes and battlers for truth in 
other ages almost seem to lay their hands upon our 
shoulders, bidding us to be faithful and true, it is not 
wrong to think so ; it is probably true that the succor 
of invisible hands roaches us in many ways. Surely 



The Fellowship of the Saints. 71 

they must have changed their character from that 
which we have known and loved on earth ; the per- 
fected Christian character must have lost its crowning 
grace and excellence^ if the spirits of men in Paradise 
do not look with interest and with succor upon the 
struggles of the church militant on earth ! Accord- 
ingly the early Churchy — basing their belief in the 
Communion of Saints^ on individual scriptures like 
the cries of the soul under the altar ; alleging that if 
Dives in Hades could think of and seek to succor his 
brethren on earthy much more the Saints in Paradise^ 
— taught the interest and intercession of the Church 
in Paradise for the Church on earth. Thus Origen : 
'' It will not be out of place to say that all the saints 
have departed this life^ still retaining their love for 
those who are in the world^ concerning themselves for 
their salvation^ and aid them by their prayers and 
meditation with God/^ Thus St. Cyprian : ^^Which- 
ever of us goes hence before the other by the speed of 
the Divine favor^ let our affection continue before the 
Lord^ let not prayer for brothers and sisters cease be- 
fore the mercy of our Father.^' Thus St. Cyril : 
" We all of us supplicate thee to the end that God^ 
by their prayers and intercessions^ may accept our 
petition. ^^ The list of witnesses could be indefinitely 
prolonged^ but enough has been quoted to show the 
belief of the early Church. It will not do to reply^ 
by quoting the example of those who have made of 
this pious custom an abuse^ nor by alleging that the 



72 /;/ Paradise, 

intercession of the saints interferes with the mediato- 
rial office of Christ ; for it is a sufficient answer to 
say that^ as their prayers and intercessions while liv- 
ing did not detract from that office of Christy so 
much less will their interest and endeavor in our be- 
half now detract from that mediation ; nay, the 
saints themselves, with their love for their earthly 
partners may be the very agents employed by the 
Great jNIediator. However remotely or intimately 
the influence and prayers of the saints may affect us, 
they at least bear witness to the continuance of 
sympathy and communion between the living and the 
dead. 

There is another feature of this wider, happier view 

of the state of the blessed dead ; it sanctifies the blessed 

custom of praying for the dead. It was 

6. Sanctifies p^^,^ ^f ^^^ jjf^ ^f ^^^ early believers ; part 
the custom ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

of praying of that comfort whicli we of later days 

dead. have lost — to believe that the dead and 

themselves were bound together by the 
closest ties of fellowship and sympathy, and the state 
of the departed, being one of progressive purity and 
peace, was a proper subject for their prayers. The 
Jewish Church had so prayed for centuries; our 
Lord and His apostles passed over the custom with- 
out condemnation ; taught it, not directly, but rather 
as an inference from the truth that death is not the 
limit of preparation and purification. And so from 
tlie simple words that love and hope inscribed in the 



The Fellovoship of the Saints. 78 

catacombs praying for " peace^ llglit and refreshment ^' 
for their departed^ to the profound statement of belief 
contained in all the primitive liturgies : — ^^ O Lord^ 
mighty God^ receive this oblation for all godly and 
righteous fathers who have pleased thee^ and for all 
the dead who have been separated and have departed 
from us ; '' — the voice of the early Church ascended 
for the souls of the departed. This — which our nat- 
ural human affection craves ; this — which was sanc- 
tioned by the primitive Church and is still a part^ 
though slight and almost indiscernible^ in the worship 
of the Church to-day ; this — which is a witness to us 
that they have not passed beyond the reach of our 
affection ; this pious custom if it were more universal^ 
would help us to grasp and realize the intimate fel- 
lowship that holds between the living and the dead. 



VI. 

MUTUAL RECOGNITION AND 
SERVICE. 

THUS we think of the blessed dead^ entered into 
the rest of Paradise ; " their pure hearts jarred 
no more by the harshness of this oft discordant life ; 
their earnest minds drinking at the perennial font of 
truth ; their frailties cast away with the coil of mor- 
tality they have left behind ; their sainted love wait- 
ing to receive us^ as we too one by one pass the dark 

limits which sever us from their embrace/^ 
The Fellow- and enter with them the last great fellow- 
Paradise, ship — the truer, deeper felloicsliip of saints 

in Paradise. There and then the deepest 
longings of the human heart find their satisfaction. 
The dreadful separation is over ; the period of wait- 
ing and preparation has ended ; the vails of misunder- 
standing are rent asunder ; before us^ together and 
united^ await the peace and progress of the skies. 
As we think of that reunion^ how many are the ques- 
tions that eagerly press upon us. Shall we know each 
other in Paradise ? Have they in their glorified con- 
dition passed beyond us so that we shall fail to recog- 
nize in some radiant spirit the loved partner of our 



Mutual Recognition and Service. 75 

earthly life? Shall we really and certainly know 
and recognize each other ? Shall the dear old rela- 
tionships of onr homes be continued? Shall the 
mother and child^ the husband and wife^ the brother 
and sister^ the friend and friend^ while united in the 
bonds of love with all, be still more closely related 
in affection with each other? Shall these relation- 
ships with all of their sweet joy and sympathy and 
helpfulness be ours still? How often and how 
eagerly have these questions been asked, and how our 
answer to them almost takes aAvay the bitterness of 
death and colors our anticipations of the home beyond 
the skies. 

The course of our thoughts have tended to prove 
that these relationships will, indeed, be ours — ours in 
purer ^ holier and more lasting form than 
These rela- when we were upon earth together. We 
will be have seen the obstacles which interfered 

stronger and ^^y{\\^ perfect fellowship ou earth, we have 
shown that, Avith the disappearance of 
these obstacles this fellowship grew finer and deeper ; 
we have now to see that, as this fellowship takes its 
last and final form in Paradise, all these ties that bind 
us to each other, and to the larger circles of humanity, 
will not only be continued, but Avill be strengthened 
and purified. Oh, for our eternal comfort, let us 
realize that God is good ; that whatever treasures of 
the heart He gives us in life and then takes away, He 
will at last give back to us, when we are worthy of 



76 /;/ Paradise. 

the gift^ in the most perfect form. Here are the 

proofs — but better^ here are the blessings which are 

promised to us. 

In the fellowship of Paradise there will be perfect 

knowledge and recognition of each other. This is the 

question above all other questions upon 

1. Perfect ^yliidi the hearts of men in every race ris- 

knowledge 

and recogni- ing out of barbarism have craved for cer- 

other. tainty. Without this assurance the hope 

of personal immortality grows pale and 
dim. They have asked as they laid away the wasted 
tabernacles of their loved ones in the grave Avhether 
they should know each other in some better state^ 
where misunderstandings and mistakes could no 
longer cloud their communion ^^'ith each other, and 
where there would be no further fear of death and 
separation. Faint and feeble for the most part, have 
been the answers of their sacred oracles. But the 
Christian and Jewish' sacred books in the general 
drift of their teaching, as well as in specific passages 
vouchsafed to us, have spoken no uncertain answer. 
David fasted and wept for his child while it was alive 
that God might spare it, but when it was irrevocably 
gone, he arose with the unwavering assurance : " I 
shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.'^ 
Moses and Elijah of sucli vastly different periods ap- 
peared in the Transfiguration of Christ, and knew 
each other and together spoke of the Lord's decease. 
Dives and Lazarus from such vastly different stations 



Mutual Recognition and Service. 77 

in life identified and recognized each other in the in- 
termediate state. The Apostle St. John^ although 
seeing only for a moment behind the lifted vail, rec- 
ognized the four and twenty elders, and the one 
hundred and forty-four thousand, whose names were 
written in the book of life. But to pass from the 
scriptural proofs of mutual recognition, let us ask, 
how is it possible that there should be conscious life 
and memory, without knowledge and recognition? 
How can the whole family of God exist without the 
mutual knowledge of its members ? or a communion 
of saints v/ithout the mutual sympatliy and happiness 
of those united in this sacred solidarity? ^^Are 
the children of the Father,'' one has asked, '' to cease 
to know each other precisely at the moment when 
they enter into the Father's house ? " Nay, it is not 
too much to say, that the blessedness of Paradise, even 
the final beatific vision itself — vfould lose for us their 
charm, unless our loved ones were sharers wath us of 
that bliss and partakers of that vision. To the lov- 
ing heart it is impossible to conceive of any life of 
bliss without those strong affections, — the friendship 
strong as death, the love stronger than death, — which 
were the chief blessings of our earthly life. We can- 
not imagine any of those radiant spirits, in association 
with w^hom our character was formed, and from whom 
life took on most of its w^orth and value, to be like 
some brilliant comet, touching our lives for a moment, 
and tlien never to cross our path again through all 



78 /// Paradise. 

the cycles of eternity. jMoral difference there may 
be, spiritual growth beyond iis tliere may be, but not 
such as to necessitate the obliteration of the sweet 
communion which once was our most precious gift on 
earth. And so the mass of Christians have always 
felt that, even if there were no specific declarations of 
scripture, the same argument that guarantees an im- 
mortal life guarantees also an eternal love, and that 
argument to them is the fad that God is and God is 
Love. They have not cared to ask the question, 
what will be the method of this reunion and recogni- 
tion. We know little of the condition of spiritual 
life or of spiritual bodies, and it is useless, if not ir- 
reverent, to fabricate any fancies upon the subject ; 
but whatever may be the conditions and environment 
we know they must be such as to promote, and not 
to hinder, living and loving communion. Thus 
viewed, this anxious question should most truly be 
put in this form : ^^ How should we not know each 
other ? when to us that soul has been ' the soul of our 
soul ' — the dearest part and parcel of our being.^^ 
Through all the manifold forms of expression on 
earth we have recognized that intimate spirit ; a whis- 
per, a voice, a letter, or even what is not written in 
black and white, what comes out between the lines, 
have all been sufficient to give us a revelation of the 
lieart Avithin, and even of its variant moods. To sup- 
pose that there can be any form of embodiment or 
any method of expression that will conceal a ^^ spirit 



Mutual kecognition and Service, 79 

that has been nearest to our own/^ and we not able 
to recognize it under any disguise^ is to doubt the 
powerful instincts of love. ^^But/^ says another, 
"why postulate any disguise at all? If the spirit 
wear any frame, however ethereal, it must bear some 
resemblance to the first, since both were the fitting 
shell of the same soul. When we shall behold the 
yet lovelier raiment of the same beloved soul, alike in 
all we loved so fondly, unlike, inasmuch as every token 
of weakness, pain, age and care will forever have dis- 
appeared ^^ we will know it and recognize it at once, 
without the introduction of angel ministrants. 

Satisfied upon this point, the anxious heart goes 
one step further and asks : " When our spirits meet 

again, is there no hope that the relation- 
2. Continu- ships of earth will be taken up and re- 
earthly ties, newed ? ^^ There have been religions 

which taught that the bonds of consan- 
guinity were loosened forever at death, but these have 
been religions which believed, strange as it seems to 
us, that such relations were carnal and sinful. The 
first step of Buddha, in his search for the path of 
holiness, was the desertion of wife and child. There 
have not been lacking in the Christian church those 
like the early gnostics who taught the same unnatu- 
ral doctrines. But to us Avho know that Christ con- 
secrated marriage by His presence, and sanctified 
childhood by His embrace, and restored to widowhood 
her only son and to parentage its little daughter, and 



80 /;/ Paradise. 

to sisterhood their only brother^ there can be no pos- 
sible doubt of the sacredness of all human affections 
and relationships. Relationships founded upon no 
deep sentiment of the heart may be severed at the 
grave^ but not so the loving ties that circle around 
every sacred hearthstone. We fathom here only part 
of the meaning which is contained in those familiar 
names, father and mother, brother and sister, husband 
and wife, son and daughter, and we shall make up in 
eternity that which fell short in our comprehension 
and enjoyment of them here. This follows from the 
very nature of the problem. A large pait of the 
character of every human being is formed under the 
influence of these companionships ; our lives, our 
hearts, our souls, bear the impress of these sacred 
ties ; our siprits become fitted and adapted to these 
influences as the lock to the key ; continued in eter- 
nity in identical being, with the same conscious life 
and memory, our lives would ever be incomplete un- 
less over and above all general affections there were 
continued these specific affections which are woven in 
and out with the constitution of our being. Lifted 
up to its highest spiritual type, there will still be tlie 
mutual feeling of mother towards her child, and of 
cliild towards its mother, of husband towards his wife, 
and of wife towards her husband. There are prob- 
lems which sometimes bewilder the hopes of renewed 
relationships in another world, like that with which 
the Sadducces attempted to bewilder our Lord, but 



Mutual Recognition and Service. 81 

these problems spring from thinking of eternity under 
the limitations of time. Where all are pure and 
loving^ this much at least we can assert^ there can be 
no conflicting claims of love and friendship. At- 
tachment there shall be^ as Mrs. Browning sings, 
unselfish : 

" That love for one, from which there doth not spring 
True love for all, is but a worthless thing." 

But the text of our Lord's ansvver to the Saddu- 
cees deserves more extended consideration because it 

seems^ at first sight, to disturb our hope 
Luke 20 : of the renewal of one of the most precious 
plained. of human ties. The Sadducees came to 

Him to disprove the doctrine of another 
life by presenting a problem that seemed to involve 
the impossibility of continuing the relationships of 
life, viz : the problem of the childless woman and the 
seven husbands, ^^ Whose wife of them shall she be?^^ 
Our Lord's answer in full, given by St. Luke, was : 
^^ The sons of this age marry and are given in mar- 
riage : but they that are accounted worthy to attain 
that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
marry nor are given in marriage : for neither can 
they die any more : for they are equal unto the 
angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resur- 
rection.^' Marriage is the most sacred of earthly 
relations ; connected with it and dependent upon it 
are all our most cherished associations ; without it 



82 /;/ Paradise, 

there could be no home and precious ties. If there- 
fore the most sacred of relations is to end at death 
then no human relationship will continue beyond the 
grave^ and whatever may be the charms of Paradise 
they will compete at fearful disadvantage with those 
of earth. If wife and husband^ child and parent, 
friend and friend are never again to be to each other 
what they have been^ if these tender ties are to be 
swallowed up in the monotony of unspecialized affec- 
tion^ if each is to ascend 

*' Aloft, aloft, from terrace to broad terrace evermore,'' 

but ever farther apart from each other, then our 
human hearts will have to be greatly changed before 
they can anticipate such a prospect with acquiescence. 
]\Iany would be tempted to join the agnostic refusal : 

" You promise heavens free from strife, 
Pure truth and perfect change of will ; 
But sweet, sweet is this human life. 
So sweet I fain would breathe it still ; 
Your chilly stars I can forego, 
This warm, kind world is all I know." 

But our Lord's words contain no such barren pros- 
pect. We must remember the hind of marriage, and 
therefore the kind of relation between man and 
woman to which his words referred. In those days 
woman was the property of her husband and passed 
(as the case mentioned by the Sadducees shows), along 
with land and title to the heir-at-law. A marriage 
of convenience of this century, a marriage not based 



Muhtal kecognitmi and Service, 83 

upon the sentiment of pure affection, is the nearest 
approach we have to the marriages of that day — the 
marriages which Christ asserts shall pass away — the 
marriages of which there shall be no continuance in 
the world to come. Such unions have no element of 
perpetuity, even in the beginning, and we may look 
upon their cessation with indifference, nay, with per- 
fect relief to the unfortunate subjects of them. But 
with us the ideal of marriage presumes the deepening 
affection and oneness of its subjects, and such true 
unions, rooted in deep affection, death, no more than 
man, can put asunder what God hath joined together. 
Of such our Lord speaks not, save that he implies 
that these, in contrast with the false relationships, will 
not be done away in all the spiritual and affectional 
part of their communion. Nay, if we remember our 
Lord's custom of using the words ^^this age'' and 
'' that age," " this world " and '' that world," not to 
mark the difference between this present world and 
a future one, but to mark the difference between the 
world ruled by Him and the world ruled by evil, 
then we have the thought that His words about mar- 
riage relate to the present condition of things in the 
world ; " the sons of this world or age," that is, men 
and women who follow worldly wisdom and conven- 
tionality, " marry and are given in marriage," these 
business or social contracts are formed : but " they 
that are accounted worthy to attain that world or 
age," that is, the men and women among whom the 



84 /;/ Paradise. 

Christian spirit rules discountenance such mockeries 
of sacramental union : to them marriage is '^ the con- 
secrated union of those who love ^^ and is as lasting as 
the relationshijDS of angels^ '^ for neither can they die 
any more for they are equal unto the angels/^ I 
have explained this passage at length because it seems 
at first glance to forbid the hope of renewing the 
most cherished relationship of life, while at heart it 
declares this union of loving spirits to be ^^rock 
rooted amid the mutabilities of time/^ " Death does 
not part those thus united ; they are one in Christ 
and they are one forever; the seeming separation 
which death effects is the prelude to a yet more per- 
fect union/^ And as the greater always includes the 
less^ so with the permanence of this great human re- 
lationship will all other relationships of home be 
permanent in the home beyond the grave. AVhatever 
affections of our hearts have been pure and noble^ 
fervent and self-sacrificing^ they may with confidence 
look forward to the other ^vorld as their reward^ their 
resting place and full fruition. 

Even this blessed truth of the continuance of our 
earthly relationships is not all^ but of itself yields an- 
other truth which is thoroughly concord- 

3. Mutual ^^-^^ ^\\i\\ scriptures aud sup-g^ested in many 

service ^ ^^ 

and places. There will be a ministry of semce 

ness. ^^^^^ helpfulness to each other. Such, in 

imperfect form, has been the pleasant 

privilege of our relationship with each other, as to- 



Mutual Recognition and Service. 85 

gether we worked our way through life. It has been 
our supremest joy to be of service to each^ to do the 
blessed work of helping, guiding, leading the oft 
faltering steps, of sympathizing, comforting, lighten- 
ing the oft burdened heart ; the mother has yielded 
to no weariness, the father has scrupled at no sacrifice, 
the true friend has counted service a privilege. 
With the continuance of our relations in Paradise, 
with the growth of love and with the still remaining 
need of mutual services, is it not a natural and legit- 
imate conclusion that the occupations of friendship 
shall continue? that the ministry of love shall not 
be suspended? that the ability to help shall be 
greater, and our helpfulness to each other still closer 
weave the bonds of love ? Scripture points this way 
by precept and example ; it shows us the Great High 
Priest on His mission of mercy to the spirits in 
prison. It tells us in many ways that Ave are " Avork- 
ers together Avith Christ ; ^^ '^ heirs of God and joint- 
heirs Avith Christ,^' — heirs together Avith Him, not 
certainly only of his glory, but also of His mission ; 
— AA^ords AA^hich are not confined to time, but also to 
the Avork of that other Avorld. And to avoid all 
possible misconception, three times in the Book of 
Revelations it is declared that Christ " hath made us 
kings and priests unto God : ^^ if these be not mean- 
ingless titles, they fully declare our ministry and 
priesthood beyond the grave : for the term " king- 
hood '^ suggests the thought of guiding and leading, 



86 /;/ Paradise, 

and the term ^^priesthoocV^ is synonymous with the 
idea of service and sympathy ; if those who obtain 
the first resurrection are to be ^^ kings and priests/^ 
then there will be both occasions and objects for the 
exercise of sympathy and guidance, AVe cannot 
think of a Christian relationship without love as its 
main ingredient^ and cannot conceive of love without 
service and sacrifice as its very heart and core. The 
lovingness of a nature^ its capacity for strong and 
deep attachments^ intensified in Paradise beyond its 
highest activity on earthy must constitute there^ as 
here, the strongest motive, out of which it moves 
forth on a ministry of service and sympathy. AYe 
cannot doubt that in a state of imperfect conditions, 
w^hich Paradise represents, there will be opportunity 
for such a ministry. On our part — if the grave has 
closed between us and one whom we have miscon- 
strued or failed to love as he deserved, that ministry 
will give us no peace until we have whispered those 
words " Forgive me,^^ which were unsaid on earth. 
On their part — if some have wronged us, that minis- 
try will not be content until we have vanquished the 
heart that loved us not, and by love at last won back 
the grateful gift of love. While wdth those who 
loved us, and whom we loved, ^^we can picture to 
ourselves that epoch in our progress, through succes- 
sively loftier and more purified existences, when those 
who on earth strengthened each other in every tem])- 
tation, sustained each other under every trial, mingled 



Mutual Recognition and Service, 87 

smiles at every joy and tears at every sorrow, will, in 
succeeding varieties of being, hand in hand, heart 
with heart, thought for thought, penetrate together 
each new secret, gain each added height, glow with 
each new rapture, drink in each successive relation,^' 
and merge at last into the perfect fellow^ship of love. 
But even this perfect sympathy with the loved and 
good need not end all the energies of our ministry of 
service. Beyond the circle of the loved and intimate 
is the vast and varied gathering of all humanity : 
how little sometimes is the difference between the 
decline into grievous failure and the ascent into glori- 
ous success I How small oftentimes the distinction 
between the sinner and the saint. Without attempt- 
ing to touch this great question, which many of the 
fathers of the Church dwelt upon, the vexed question 
of Our Lord's mission to the dead — surely we, who 
feel the burden common to all humanity, who know 
how the grace of God is missed by so many, who feel 
the yearnings of a fraternal heart towards who " have 
missed the way,'' surely we may believe some span of 
sympathy and service will reach even to wandering 
guilt. We may at least cherish the hope, from the 
divine example of Christ, that " the loving soul will 
be sent to bind up the brokenhearted ; and the serene 
soul to breathe peace to the cumbered, the harassed, 
and the wayworn ; and the fiery soul to do loyal 
battle with the powers of evil.'' 

With this thought we close the circle of the fellow- 



88 In Paradise. 

ship of Saints in Paradise. Soon for us the work of 
earthly life will be over; soon for us the note of 
worldly anxiety will cease^ and we^ too^ shall join the 
'' emanci])ated brotherhood of the departed/^ Let ns 
comfort our grief with the hopes of this blessed re- 
unioDj and live the life of faithful service that ^ve 
may be made '' meet for the inheritance of the saints 
in li2:ht/^ 



VII. 
SPIEITUAL BODIES. 

1 Cor. 15:49. " As we have borne the image of the earthly, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly.'' 

(I)opeoo[jiev teal rfjv eUova rov Eixovpaviov 

IT must be admitted^ without hesitation^ that we 
have no data^ apart from scripture^ upon which 
to form any conception of the spiritual body. Upon 
this subject it is convincingly true that 
Scripture " the natural man perceiveth not the things 
authority, of God/^ and even the discernment of the 
spiritual man hardly reaches to more than 
the fact that we have a spiritual body. What shall 
be its form or whether it shall have any form ; what 
its organs and their functions or whether it shall have 
any organs ; what its relation to the present body^ or 
whether it shall have any relation ; what shall be its 
method and manner of expression : are questions upon 
Avhich we can form no clear conception. But the 
inability which adheres to the comprehension of the 
spiritual body is^ after all^ only the same ignorance 
that attaches to all the constituent elements of our 
being, and in no way affects the faith or hope of the 

89 



90 /// Paradise. 

Christian. AVliat is the natural body ? The chem- 
ist can tell you of its elements^ but he cannot weave 
a shred of its fair texture or recompose a drop of its 
vital blood. AVhat is life ? The biologist can show 
you the method of its action^ but he cannot touch with 
his scalpel the " mysterious seat of life's retreat/' or 
the narrow cell where thought resides. AVhat is spirit ? 
The theologian can mark its symptoms and define its 
fruits^ but he cannot tell you the secrets of its being. 
AVhat is the spiritual body ? The same plea of igno- 
rance must be entered : but let not this disturb the 
fact of our faith nor the ground of our consolation in 
the truths concerning our spiritual embodiment which 
Christ has revealed. 

If we would arrange our thoughts in proper order, 
we must begin with St. Paul's clear enunciation : 
'^ There is a natural body and there is a spiritual 
body." As there are various kinds of flesh on earth, 
men, beasts, birds, and fishes ; as there 
1. A natii- are variant glories in the heavens above, 

^'^ -I ° '^- V sun, moon, and differing^ stars : so there is 
and a spirit- " ^ ^ 

iial body. a difference and classification among bodies 
— terrestrial, celestial, natural and spirit- 
ual. Here are four kinds which j^i'obably enter into 
two classes : the terrestrial bodies which are also nat- 
ural iyvxinov) ] and the celestial which are also spir- 
itual (jTvevfiartKov.) They stand in two categories ; 
they are contrasted with each other ; their particular 
pro^^erties are brought out by contrast ; they cannot 



spiritual Bodies. 91 

possibly be the same^ nor the varieties of the same. 
Man has the gift of both ; so to speak^ he is — in the 
Apostle's conception — double-bodied; he has a natural 
embodiment and a spiritual embodiment : he is clothed 
and apparelled naturally and spiritually. It is no 
more wonderful that " there should be a body fitted 
to the capacities and wants of man's highest part, his 
spirit, than there should be one fitted to the capacities 
and wants of his subordinate lower nature.^' Nay 
rather it is comforting to think that as the natural 
body fades and decays, we shall have the possession 
of another, a spiritual body. And this is the first 
truth, in thinking of our future condition, which we 
must realize and hold fast,— a source of consolation 
often overlooked, — a truth St. Paul so forcibly de- 
clares in his great argument on the resurrection, that 
that " was not first which is spiritual, but that which 
is natural ; and afterward, that which is spiritual.^' 

The Apostle throws into broad contrast the dis- 
tinguishing features of the natural body and the 
spiritual. There is in Christianity none of that spirit 
of gnosticism which, looking upon matter as essen- 
tially evil, has striven to throw contempt 

2. The dis- upon the body. On the contrary, it has 
tinguishing iii«ii •! • t-* 

features of always had high honor paid to it. it is 

the natuml ^j^^ ^^^^ |^ ^f ^]^g jj^j Qj^^g^^ j^ jg ^j^^ 
and spirit- ^ -^ 

ual bodies, tabernacle of the immortal spirit. It is 

the shrine of the soul. By our affections 

we have counted it part of the personality of our loved 



92 In Paradise. 

ones. We study it as the expressive dial-plate of the 
life within ; Ave have watched it in health with joy ; 
we have waited upon it in sickness with tenderness ; 
in death Ave lay it aAvay and care for its resting place 
Avith reverent grief. It is^ it must be^ ever dear to 
us^ as the shrine of so many cherished associations. 
AVe can only tear our hearts aAvay from it by the 
promise of another body — its counterparty like it yet 
so much higher — the spiritual body. And yet as age 
draAvs near^ and disease works to its consummation^ 
this body of earth so truly fulfills the Apostle's Avords; 
"It is sown in corruption^^ *, — the laAA^s of nature 
work^ the poAver that binds its atoms together is 
loosened^ and under the unvarying force of chemical 
reaction it sinks into a state of corruption. " It is 
soAvn in dishonor '' ; — AAdiatever beauty may have 
marked its earthly form^ Avhatever strength thrilled 
through its muscles^ AvhatcA^er grace characterized its 
every movement^ in the grave it lies dishonored. " It 
is soAvn in loeakness '^ ; — in life it may have toAvered 
above its fellows in manly strength^ every muscle 
hard and flexible^ every nerve strong and healthy^ 
every organ filled Avith abounding vitality, stretched 
upon its death bed it is the type of all Aveakness 
and powerlessness. Hoav can avc stand this aAvful 
but certain fate of an object so dear and venerated, 
unless on the rebound there flashes before our minds 
the thought of a body, Avhichj as it is sloAvly raised 
Avithin us, groAving invisibly like a fairy tabernacle 



spiritual Bodies. OS 

^^ not made with hands/^ building up more quickly 
than a coral structure^ fit to be the pure and perma- 
nent habitation of an immortal spirit^ is reared and 
raised — not in corruption^ but in incorruption ; not in 
dishonor^ but in glory ; not in weakness, but in power. 
Only as we believe, and realize the hope of such a 
body, can we let loose the grasp of reverent affection 
upon the earthly tabernacles which have shrined the 
spirits of our relatives and friends : else, with the 
Romanist we will reverence and worship the relics of 
the saints departed ; or with the Protestant, will sadly 
stand by the grave side and meditate upon the day 
when the four winds of heaven will bring together 
their stolen treasures, and the body of the earthly life 
shall be recomposed. " Flesh and blood cannot in- 
herit the kingdom of heaven ; neither doth corruption 
inherit incorruption/^ Buried bodies are " flesh and 
blood ^^ ; by their very nature they are corruptible 
and perishable ; save for their temporary association 
with those who for a while have used them, they have 
nothing in common with the spiritual body which 
they helped to prepare for and by which they will be 
replaced. On the other hand, spiritual bodies are 
heavenly in their origin and have nothing that is 
subject to corruption and dissolution ; nothing in 
common with the grave, into, which they neither can 
enter nor from which come back again. Such is the 
distinction between the natnral and the sp'^\itual body. 
Having clearly realized that we possess these two 



94 In Paradise. 

bodies^ let us next see when the spiritual body shall 
be ours. In one place the apostle speaks 
3. Develop- as if it were a present possession. " There 
spiritua/ ^ ^^ (soTi) a natural body and there is {eon) 
body. a spiritual body ^^ — as if both were in our 

present possession : in another place he 
speaks as if it were in store for us : " And as we 
have borne the image of the earthly we sliall also bear 
the image of the heavenly^' — as if it were to be a 
future gift. There is nothing contradictory^ as we 
shall see^ in these two statements. They simply de- 
note different stages in the development of the spirit- 
ual body. He gives us an analogy which contains 
the whole truth. '^ And that which thou sowest^ thou 
sowest not the body that shall be^ but bare (naked) 
grain^ it may chance of wheat^ or of some other kind.^^ 
The sowing and resurrection of the grain is the anal- 
ogy, then, which we have to study. If we study it 
carefully it will tell us what we desire to know con- 
cerning the development of the spiritual body. Study 
a grain of wheat : beneath the same husk is a bulk of 
nutritious and albuminous matter, and at its base a 
tiny germ or embryo: the bulk of matter is the 
granary on which the tiny plantlet feeds, the tiny 
plantlet is endowed with vitality and feeding upon 
the store-house, shoots up into life. Place the seed 
in the ground, the dews moisten it, the heat warms 
it, the chemistry of the soil quickens it, and the germ- 
let for days and nights is unseen, for it is feeding 



spiritual Bodies. 95 

Upon the bulk of nutritious matter^ but when it has 
grown strong by this nutriment, the germ casts oif 
the husk, which dies and is known no more — the 
outer integument becomes only a portion of the soil, 
but the now strong and nourished germ breaks away 
from all confinement, shoots up in the sunshine and 
air with quickened life, assuming that " own body as 
it hath pleased Him,^^ and finally reaches its perfect 
type and fulfills its destiny. So it is with the grain 
of wheat ; now St. Paul uses it as an anology ; but 
of what is it an analogy ? I think that most of us, 
until it was pointed out by an excellent scholar (Dr. 
Goodhart) considered that sowing the live seed in the 
ground was like sowing the dead body in the grave : 
we thus lost the force and fitness of the comparison ; 
the shelving off the husk of the seed at the point 
where the sprout shoots forth into life is like laying off 
the natural body in the grave, there the resemblance is 
complete, but in no other particular. The seed with 
life in it going on at once to better growth is not at 
all like the dead body with no life in it, going on to 
dissolution. Where then is the analogy ? How shall 
we find the force and beauty of the Apostle's compar- 
ison ? How shall we learn the sacred lesson he de- 
signs to teach us ? Ah, this is the true analogy, — the 
sowing and growth of the seed in the ground is like 
the planting and development in the soil of the world of 
the entire man. 

In this view it is almost a perfect comparison. 



96 In Paradise, 

Beneath man's one apparent form there is the bulk of 
his nature^ his material nature^ and there is the spir- 
itual germ^ and it stands to the latter as the albumen 
to the embryo in the grain ; it is subservient to it ; it 
is the matter out of which he gains and trains his 
sph'itual nature. The soil of the world and of expe- 
rience does for him what the soil of the earth does for 
the plant : unseen influences wait upon him^ the 
warmth and air he needs he finds in the love of God ; 
the Divine Spirit is to his spiritual growth as the dews 
and sunshine of heaven are to the growing plant. 
And if there had been no interruption by sin in the 
case of the man^ as there was none in the case of the 
plant, the analogy would have been complete : man 
w^ould have gone from stage to stage in his develop- 
ment; the subordinate nature would have sloAvly 
yielded to his spiritual ; the spirit would have grown 
strong ; the spiritual body would have slowly devel- 
oped ; death would have come, only as the dropping 
off of his natural body, as the grooving plantlet sheds 
the husk of the seed into dissolution ; and with quick- 
ened life, man, the perfect man, in body and spirit, 
w^ould have risen to his consummation. But now 
because sin has misplaced man from his proper order, 
we have had terrible ideas of death and false ideas of 
the resurrection ; of death, because we fail to see that 
it is only the shedding of the natural body, as the 
seed sheds its integument, in order to reach fuller de- 
velopment : of the resurrection, because we fail to 



Spmtual Bodies. 9? 

Realize that throughout our life we are rising from the 
dead^ as we subordinate^ and use our lower material 
nature^ as the embryo feeds on the granary of stored- 
up nutriment. 

It will help us to realize these truths if we notice 
how this process took place in Christ. No one, I 

think, will say that the '' sowing time ^^ of 
4. The ex- the ^' seed of the woman/' which was to 
Christ. crush the head of all evil, was at the 

burial of Christ, when His body was 
placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, but was 
at the birth of Christ, when God planted it in the soil 
of the world. Born into the form of man, that form 
held the double nature shared by all humanity ; the 
material nature that came through the long line of 
His genealogy, given by St. Luke, and the spiritual ; 
all the elements, in a word, of perfect humanity ; but 
how great was the difference in His development. 
The natural body increased in stature, grew and 
changed like the bodies of men ; but all the time, 
owing to His perfect sinlessness, tlie spiritual was 
utilizing and turning to its use, all the experiences 
which came through His fleshly body : was assimi- 
lating, so to speak, all the food-supply of His earthly 
experience. He was ^^ rising from the dead'' all 
through His life, with every temptation He over- 
came, and w itli every weakness He subdued : His 
spiritual body was slowly being fashioned. At times 
it burst through the translucent covering of the earthly 



S8 In Paradise. 

bodv^ as when He was transfigured on tlie Mount of 
Transfiguration^ or as the celestial radiance broke 
through in the garden so that the multitude fell down 
befijre His supernal brightness^ or when He slipped 
like impalpable ether through the hands that sought 
to throw Him from the brow of the hill of ISTazareth. 
^^As it was^ when He tasted death upon the cross 
tliere was but little left for Him to lay aside^ and the 
final change was in process of completion when He 
appeared to His disciples after His resurrection:'' 
these appearances in method and manner were beyond 
all laws that govern the movements of the natui^al 
body^ so we believe it was our Lord's spiritual body^ 
which men saw and handled^ but not yet in its per- 
fect form^ in all the splendor and loveliness it shall 
wear^ after He leaves the earth of His humiliation 
and ascends to '' the glory He had with the Father 
before the world was." And we^ as we conform our 
lives to the example of Christy rise with Him (as 
scripture declares of us) all through our life from sin 
and evil^ daily dying unto sin and daily rising unto 
righteousness^ — we, too, are thereby developing our 
spiritual lives and fashioning our spiritual bodies. 
The same author, who has led us to the true interpre- 
tation of the analogy of the seed with the life of man, 
closes a very strong argument with these words : — 
" In any case, if St. Paul's analogy be valid, we are 
forming our spiritual bodies noiv ; they are precisely 
fitted to the growth which has produced them, and 



spiritual Bodies, S9 

when manifested^ they must manifest the character of 
their owners. St. Paul does not encourage the belief 
that we shall ever at any time be bodiless existences ; 
rather he would seem to imply that^ as the old body 
falls away^ we shall realize the possession of the new 
which has been forming all along though unseen by 
us.'^ To say nothing of the impossibility of conceiv- 
ing of a spiritual life expressing itself without em- 
bodiment and without organs^ it gives the hearty in- 
stead of a blank and dreary waiting for a far off 
resurrection^ the immediate possession of a satisfactory 
fact ; the spirits of the departed^ absent, indeed^ from 
the body of earthy but clothed, instead, with the body 
that is from above. 

AVhat, then, are we to think of the ^^ day of resur- 
rection/^ of which the Bible in certain places speaks ? 
Here is the place to unfold St. Paul's other 

5. The final statement : '^ We shall also bear the imap:e 
stage : wear- ^ 

ing the im- of the heavenly. '^ In many different ways 

heavenly^ and forms of statement scripture affirms a 
day in which there shall be a general res- 
urrection of the dead. The statement as given by our 
Lord in St. John's Gospel is : " The hour cometh in 
which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice ; 
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of 
life ; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrec- 
tion of judgment.'' This declares another form of 
resurrection from that resurrection from the dead that 
has been taking place all through life ; but there is 



loo /;; Paradise. 

no discrepanc}'. The spiritual body at that day oi^ 
hour shall assume its perfect and completed form: 
the spiritual body which now is^ and is now fashion- 
ing, shall then wear " the image of the heavenly.'^ 
There is a time when the spirit of man shall be like 
Christ ; so at that time, the spiritual body of man, also 
shall be like the body of Christ^s glory. The likeness 
to Christ shall be complete in eyevj part. ^^ Our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our 
humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of 
His glory, according to the working whereby he is 
able even to subject all things unto Himself.^^ " As 
we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also 
bear the image of the heavenly.^^ AYords cannot tell 
us what is the glory of Christ's body — what shall be 
the glory of ours ; the most eloquent words fail to tell 
us wliat shall be that '^ image of the heavenly,^' which 
we shall finally wear. If we turn to His body after 
the resurrection from Joseph's tomb, it had about it a 
glory and a loveliness so that even His familiar friends 
did not at once recognize the Lord's body. It tran- 
scended all the laws of matter. It was free from all 
the limitations of earth. But even this was not the full 
glory of our Lord's body — its heavenly glory would 
have been too blinding for mortal eyes. But what- 
ever shall be its supernal brightness, we are told tliat 
our spiritual bodies sliall be like it in all the splendor 
of its heavenly condition. 

We will lose ourselves in mystery if we pry into 



spiritual Bodies. 101 

the unsearcbable things of God ; we may not know, 
w^e cannot tell, the supernal beauty of His 
6. Like glorified body, and of ours conformed unto 
unlike the Its image ; but this at least we may know, 
earth.^ to the heart's infinite comfort : it shall be 

both like and unlike the old familiar body 
of earth. The spiritual body shall be like the natu- 
ral. The Body of our Lord's Resurrection resembled 
His earthly form, for through the cloud of glory and 
mystery that surrounded it, the apostles soon recog- 
nized the dear, familiar marks. And so with us : the 
longing heart will not search long in Paradise for the 
loved, familiar form ; through the cloud of beauty 
and immortality that encircles it, the friend on earth 
will soon find its mate ; glorified and purified as the 
bodies of the saints shall be, they are not changed 
beyond the easy power of recognition. For we must 
remember that the spirit to a large extent fashions, 
forms, and marks the bodies of men ; the soul is the 
architect of the shrine ; and thus, the spirit and per- 
sonality remaining the same in its essential life, only 
purified and perfected, the spiritual body shall be its 
perfect expression and must resemble the dear, loved 
form of earth. But, on the other side, the spiritual 
body shall be unlike the natural — unlike it in all the 
elements of its weakness, pain, and disease. We 
complain that we can form no clear conception of a 
spiritual body, that it leaves no image on the retina 
of the mind. Try to grasp an image by this process. 



102 In Paradise, 

a sure and certain process^ by denying to the spiritual 
body^ all that limits^ defaces^ and deforms our earthly 
bodies. Xo pain with burning feet shall dance along 
the unstrung nerves ; no hidden sorrow pale the color 
from shrunken cheek ; no grief force unbidden tears 
from Aveeping eyes. This body^ oh ! how often^ with 
its appetites and passions^ has it been the minister of 
all intemperance. How often has it received back in 
aching brow and quivering nerves ; in disease slowly 
entering and paralyzing its various organs^ the penalty 
of deeds done in the flesh. How often has it been 
upon the bed of pain and sickness^ how many times 
has fever flushed^ gunpowder consumed^ and fracture 
mutilated it. And even when untouched by disease^ 
how frequently has it stood as a vail between loved 
and loving spirits ; how the outer man flashing from 
eye^ smiling from lip^ wrinkling on brow^ and grasp- 
ing with hand^ has been a false indicator of the soul 
within. Yes^ so runs the indictment against this 
^^body of our humiliation;'^ with its thick walls and 
heavy guards at every outlet^ it has often kept apart 
the dearest spirits from sweet communion of hcaii: 
with heart : it has made false entries on the dial-plate 
Avithout^ and loving spirits have read them wrongly. 
But in that other life the perfect knowledge of each 
other, and therefore, the deeper sympathy of love, 
will not be left to any '' chance look or tone.'' For 
the body that we shall wear, aa hatever else it may be, 
shall be at least the perfect expression of the spirit. 



Spirihtal Bodies. 103 

We may not know much of that glorified condition, 
but what a world of comfort is contained in the 
thought that, through a perfect medium of communi- 
cation, we shall know each other's deeper life ; — a 
knowledge, compared with which the knowledge we 
have now, of each other's spirits is looking through a 
glass darkly. Conceive of such blessedness, if you 
Avill ; then conceive of a body, out of which have 
passed all the surging waves of appetite, all the dom- 
ination of fierce and cruel passions ; then conceive of 
a body, from which no tear shall ever fall, on which 
no care shall ever leave its mark, in which no pain 
and suffering shall ever have a hold ; and you will 
have, so far as negatives can supply, a faint concep- 
tion of the spiritual body, w^liich now is fashioning, 
which, then, when perfected, shall wear the glorified 
image of the heavenly Christ. 



YIII. 
HEAYEX. 

I. Cor. 2:9. "The things which God hath prepai'ed for them 
that love Him." 

a 7)Toii.ida£i' 6 Qebc role aywrcoOLV avrov 

THE completed man^ like Christ in body and 
spirit, stands ready for bis final estate ; to 
enter npon and to enjoy '^ the good 
An inquiry tilings whicli God hath prepared for those 
peace and ^'^'ho love Him/^ A multitude of ques- 

progress tions, Avhich it is difficult to rei^ress, rusli 
of heaven. ^ -*- ^ 

upon the eager heart. How long shall 

Paradise continue? AVhen shall the intermediate 
state issue in the final condition of the saints? AVhen 
shall the church exjDCctant become the church tri- 
umphant ? AVhat shall be the scenery of heaven— a 
l^rilliant city with gates of pearly or a sylvan scene 
with shady trees and flowing rivers ? AVhat shall be 
its occupations — the ceaseless round of j^raise and 
adoration^ or the progress and activities of immortal 
souls ? All such questions — 

'' Poor fragments all of this low earth, 
Such as in dreams could hardly soothe 
A soul that once liad tasted of immortal truth," 

104 



J. 



Heaven, 105 

Ave brush aside with their answers, as only rash 
guesses of an irreverent imagination. Let ours be 
the simpler task to inquire, from abundant scriptures, 
what shall be the peace and progress of our heavenly 
life. 

Peace is the absence of all discordant elements; 
the peace of heaven rests upon the fact 

Ihe peace i\ , i^ i n i 

of heaven, that there shall be no longer any of the 
harassfng ^^^^^^^^^ which have harassed and dis- 
causes. tressed our earthly lives : 

^^ Peace is God's direct assurance 
To the souls that win release 
From this world of hard endurance, 
Peace, he tells us, only peace.'' 

Peace has never been, nor is it possible that it should 
be, the atmosphere of human life. All life is fric- 
tion. Not a single faculty works unimpeded to its 
end, nor do all our faculties work harmoniously to- 
gether. But a peace which passeth our present com- 
prehension is " God's direct assurance '^ to those who 
win heaven. There shall be an entire absence of all 
distressing causes. 

" There shall be no more curse ^^ (fcarava'dtiia), A 

curse is a blight ; that upon wliich it falls no longer 

fulfills its function. A curse early fell 

1- ^o upon creation so that it no lousier worked 

more r» i • 

curse. peacefully to its end ; the whole creation 

and every creature came under the spell ; 

in St. Paul's language, " the whole creation groaneth 



106 /// Paradise. 

and travaileth in pain together until now.'^ This is 

a different picture from that which God looked upon 

when He saw and pronounced that " everything was 

very good/^ Looking at many scenes in creation, 

they shock and puzzle our sense of justice and right. 

We try to think that '' love is creation's final law — 

though nature, red in tooth and claw, wdth ravine, 

shrieks against the creed/' But all the blighting 

effects of the curse, all the travail pains of nature, all 

the friction of misplaced functions, shall cease in the 

heavenly life : " there shall be no more curse/' And 

there shall he no more sin. " There shall in no wise 

enter into it anything that defileth, neither 

2. No whatsoever worketh abomination, or mak- 

inorG 

sin, eth a lie." This thought itself is perfect 

bliss. Sin is the great, properly speaking, 
the only evil of life ; it stands as the root of every 
evil. Its punishment to the coarse, its remorse to the 
sensitive soul, is the spectre which haunts human life. 
To be the heirs of a condition, where there shall be 
no more sin ; a state of being where absolute sinless- 
ness shall reign between man and his ]\Iaker, and be- 
tween man and man ; a condition in which perfect 
holiness shall characterize every motive and deed, and 
there shall be no need of concealment, for there shall 
be nothing to conceal ; such a promise is to us the 
pledge of complete blessedness. " And there shall be 
no night (yv^) thereJ'^ Night as the symbol of men- 
tal and moral darkness, doubt on truth and dark- 



Heaven. 107 

ness on duty^ this double obscuration overshadows 

many an earnest mind. To hate prejudice 
3; No and to love the truth^ to want to leave 

there. the darkness and to find the truth ; to be 

anxious to know the right and to do it^ 
yet to discover both paths involved in doubt^ and in 
our most solemn hours to have the ugly face of skep- 
ticism intrude itself^ surely these experiences are 
known to every earnest mind. But in heaven the 
darkness shall lift at last ; truth and duty shall lie 
before us fully illumined^ for " the Lord God giveth 
them light.^^ To seek truth shall still be our mission^ 
but it will be a search unharassed by haunting 
skepticism^ and to love duty shall continue our ser- 
vice^ but it will be a service untinged by selfishness. 

The promise runs on into other clauses : the ab- 
sence of other evils^ which are the consequences of 

the causes gone before. '' There shall be 
4. jSo ^^ mo7X sorrow (r^tv&oc)^ nor crying 

sorrow, nor {Kpavyri)^ neither shall be any more pain^^ 
p^n.^' (jTovog). We must remember the words 

used have been carefully chosen by St. 
John. The first two words express the grief that is 
the accom]3animent of bereaved affections and mourn- 
ing hearts ; the last word is the pain associated with 
unrequited toil and with life's many deeds of injustice. 
Life is full of both these evils^ bereavement and in- 
justice. We must Aveep ; even the Son of God could 
invite to tears^ when He bade the daughters of Jeru- 



108 /// Paradise, 

salem^ " AVeep for yourselves and your children.'' 
So keenly did He feel the reality of human grief; so 
tenderly did He bow in reverence before the emotions 
of every melted hearty that Himself wept before the 
grave of Lazarus^ and taught that " human sorrow 
was no sin/' And so with toil and the many deeds 
of injustice that are done upon the surface of this 
green earth and beneath the light of every day's 
smiling sun ; these are pain and torment to us. 
" Health and disease/' it has been truly said^ " honor 
and ignominy, wealth and povert}', everything we can 
name in the way of external good and evil, come to 
us more often by the virtue and vice of our parents 
and neighbors than by any merit and demerit of our 
own." It is no unmerited tirade against our high 
and noble civilization to say that in many places, 
" the earth is still full of violence and cruel habita- 
tions." Tell us that there is no justice to be done 
here or hereafter, that " wrong and tyranny shall be 
finally triumphant, and goodness and heroism ulti- 
mately defeated, and lo, there surges up from the very 
depths of souls, so high and stern remonstrance, which 
should make the hollow heavens resound with our 
indignation and our rebellion." But the Christian is 
hopefully led away from the agony of such thoughts 
by the promise that justice shall ultimately be done, 
sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and God's own 
hands shall wipe away every tear. 

The promise runs up to its consummation in the 



Heaven, 109 

clause : "And there shall be no more deatlt ^' (^dvarog). 
Deaths which in every race and in every 
5. No age of the world has been looked upon as 

death. the great destroyer ; death^ which to the 

Christian has been softened down^ but is 
still the synonym for separation^ exile from loved 
ones^ and the exchange of the familiar and dear for 
the unknown; death, which hangs insensibly sus- 
pended over every life we cherish, as the very life 
of our life, which stands ahead of us, as the great 
experience of our manhood and the supreme test 
of our religion ; death, which so blinds our eyes 
with tears at the moment of its apparent triumph 
that we cannot see the lieavenly hope nor grasp 
it with a vivid hand ; shall be no more, shall 
haunt us no more with its evil dread, shall hence- 
forth give us no single pang of anguish : it is done 
with, discharged; destroyed, when we enter upon the 
heavenly life. 

All these elements which have harassed and pained 
and made human life a misery shall exist no more in 
heaven ; every single evil, the curse, sin, 
Peace doubt, sorrow, crying, tears and death, 

Itomsphtre g^^^^ ^^ admittance there. With tliem 
of heaven, passes aw^ay the whole brood of their un- 
happy consequences. We shall never 
again feel a single throb of unhappiness. The ideal 
of God for humanity shall at last be realized. Man 
at last shall become Christ-like. Wliatever awaits 



no /;/ Paradise, 

him in liis heavenly home, he shall at least work in 
an atmosphere of peace, 

^' To this life's inquiring traveller 
Peace of knowledge of all good ; 
To the anxious truth unraveller, 
Peace of wisdom understood. 

" To the ruler, sense of action, 
Working out his great intent ; 
To the prophet, satisfaction 
In the mission he wa& sent." 

We are now assured of the peace that shall consti- 
tute the element of our heavenly life; but there is 

another half to our inquiry which we may 
II. Is legitimately seek. The scripture assures 

piwess ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ shall know no further evil in 
in heaven? our Father's home; although we cannot 

comprehend the supreme bliss of an estate 
which shall be without the distractions of earth, yet 
we believe, and comfort our hearts with this divine 
assurance of peace ; but we ask, " Is there to be no 
progress in heaven? Are its joys and beatitudes as 
stereotyped and monotonous as they have frequently 
been delineated? Are the ^many mansions of our 
Father's house ' to afford but one type of bliss, but 
one form of activity, tliat of ceaseless worship and 
adoration?" It must be admitted that the delineation 
of the joys of heaven has often been unattractive, and 
as a result, the promises of heaven have operated only 
partially and languidly on our present feelings. Al- 



Heaven. Ill 

most all men believe in a life to come; only a few 
men live as if that life were a reality. And when 
we come to unravel this strange inconsistency^ why 
promises so exceedingly great move men so slightly, 
Avhy such an '^ exceeding weight of glory '^ weighs so 
impalpably upon men's lives and conduct^ the answer 
is, partly, at least, that the heavenly life has been 
presented as an unvarying sequence of praise and ado- 
ration. To praise and worship God, 
1. Praise when we come to the joy and fullness of 
adoration ^^^^ beatific vision, would seem to be the 
in heaven, natural service of the redeemed ; it is pre- 
sented in the Book of Revelations as the 
joyful service of men and angels. Before His throne 
fall down the four and twenty elders : the spirits of 
men and of angels join in the heavenly trisagion, 
" Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty which was, 
and is, and is to come.'' The voice of praise must flow 
unceasingly from the hearts of men redeemed and 
purified by the blood of the Lamb that was slain; 
and "every creature which is in heaven, and on the 
earth, and under the earth '^ must forever ascribe 
"Blessing and honor and glory and power unto Him 
that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for- 
ever and ever." It would seem to be the simple 
movement of the great heart of redeemed humanity. 

But there are other scriptures besides the Apoca- 
lypse, and these leave no doubt upon our minds that 
the life of heaven is varied and progressive. Nay, 



112 /;/ Paradise, 

even apart from scripture^ variety in our immortal 

life would seem to be easily deduced from 
2. Variety ^j^^ f^^^^g ^^f ^^^,^-1^^ ^^.^^j j^^^ .^ ^^^^^ 
argiied. ^ ^ ...... 

from said^ " Men in this life exhibit infinite 

natural • /• j? • i x i 'x 

o-rounds. varieties oi cravnig^ character and capacity; 

and all this within the limits of virtuous 

desire and of righteous effort. We see individuals 

here^ differing from each other in almost every taste 

and sentiment; in the characters they esjDecially ad- 

mire^ in the objects they most strenuously aim at — of 

whom^ nevertheless^ w^e cannot pronounce that one is 

a more faithful servant of duty^ or likely to be more 

acceptable to God than another. There are good 

men of every phase and peculiarity of goodness ; there 

are ardent and unwearied ' fellow-laborers with God ' 

in every corner of the vineyard^ in all the countless 

departments of His infxiiitely varied husbandry. 

There are those whom God sanctifies for the patient 

endurance of His heaviest Avill. There are those 

whom He softens and purifies that they may radiate 

love and serenity around them. There are those^ 

finally, whom He has set apart to glorify and serve 

Him by the discovery of truth and the diffusion of 

knowledge. If, then, we are to preserve our essential 

identity in that other world, it follows that with a 

purged vision and a spiritualized being, discrepancies 

of aim and character be corrected, but the essential 

trend of character Avill remain the same.^^ The active 

and energetic spirit shall find scope for its energy; 



Heaven, 113 

the earnest inquirer after truth shall have the limitless 
future for his field of search ; the soul whose life on 
earth was love shall have the boundless realms of 
heaven for the exercise of its affections. But this so 
precious a truth is not merely a matter of human 
reasoning. Scripture^ as I have said^ furnishes 
abundant proof of this varied and progressive life. 
It shows us that ^^the many mansions in the Father's 
house'' are many^ not only in number^ but also in 
variety; and the variety is as great as the individ- 
uals^ for there is " a place prepared for each.'' 

The passage w^hich we select to guide our thoughts 

are the well-known vv^ords of St. Paul: ^^And now 

abideth faith^ hope^ and love^ these three; 

3. Progress j^^^^ ^}^^ 2:reatest of these is love." In this 

proved ^ 

from chapter the Apostle contrasts the life that 

13:13.* ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ W^ ^hat is to be. He does 

full justice to the things of earth ; he 
summons its brightest gifts of intellect^ the genius 
that conceives and the eloquence that utters; he sum- 
mons its highest religious attainments^ the faith that 
gives its body to be burned and the love that gives 
its goods to feed the poor; and insists that these 
qualities must be informed by love^ to reach their 
highest state. After he has passed in review all the 
highest endowments of our race^ he suddenly stops 
and speaks as though all were but elements of an im- 
perfect condition. The sight is ^^ through a glass 
darkly;" the knowledge is of ^^ things we know" and 



114 in Paradise. 

in part ; the whole present life is to the future hfe as 
a child^s ^^ speech^ thought^ and feeling/^ but there 
comes a manhood's period ; the now is contrasted 
with the then^ and the one is to the other as the child 
is to the man. The partial^ incomplete and frag- 
mentary elements of an imperfect disjDcnsation shall 
pass away ; and in its place shall come the complete- 
ness and fullness of a new dispensation ; for the im- 
perfect knowledge now enjoyed shall come the perfect 
knowledge^ ^^ fully knowing as we are fully known ;^^ 
in the place of the halting^ hesitating faith, hope^ and 
love of earth, there shall remain and continue to de- 
velop, the deepening faith, the enlarging hope, and 
the accrescent love of heaven. Thus the passage 
clearly reveals the progress and growth of our divin- 
est faculties in heaven. 

AVhat a wide horoscope is given us, as we think 
of hioidedge in heaven ; the time when we shall 
^^ fully know'^ (HTTtyvdjaofim), Here v\'e have ^^ fully 
known ^^ not even a single object; not 
4. Progress Xature, whose manifold pages we have 
knowledge, been scarcely able to decipher ; not Crea- 
tion, whose footnotes have surpassed our 
comprehension ; not Man, the depths of whose in- 
tricate being we have barely sounded ; not '^ the 
dearest soul and next our own,^^ whose heights of 
pure affection we have scarcely climbed ; not Christ, 
in all the meekness and majesty of His life, in all the 
perfection of his Imman, in all the grandeur of His 



Heaven, 115 

divine nature ; not God^ in all the harmony of His 
attributes^ in all the equity of His justice^ in all the 
unutterableness of His love, whose ways we have 
never been able to penetrate, whose thoughts we have 
never been large enough to think. But there how 
vast and varied will be the objects of our knowledge. 
'' There will be before us inviting our research, and 
feeding it with fresh results through immortal ages, 
not only our earth but the system to which it belongs, 
and the systems which lie beyond. There will be 
the secrets of time as well as those of space for us to 
learn ; the footsteps of the eternal in all worlds dur- 
ing those immeasurable epochs of the past, which 
geology and astronomy dimly agree to indicate ; the 
existences, the evolutions, the tragedies and the re- 
demptions which now we can barely and dimly con- 
jecture, l^ut which then will form the feast and pas- 
ture of our daily life.^' Apart from creation there 
will be Christ to know, in all the hidden recesses of 
His human life, the hours of His temptation and 
trial, the hours of His heroism and grandeur, the 
hours of His bloody cross and passion ; and there will 
be the illimitable Fatherhood of God, accessible to us 
through the Son and by the Spirit, not "in the 
fathomless abysses of His glory,'^ but in the sweetness 
and harmony of all His attitudes. Yes, knowledge 
Y/ill be there, and will be ample, for all the w^ise and 
searching of the world. 

Fcdth shall abide. It has been a wrong interpreta- 



116 /;/ Paradise. 

tation of this passage to say that faith and hope shall 
cease^ because faith passes into sight and 
5. Progress hope into fruition. Nay^ faith abides, not 
faith. ceases^ the apostle writes. All through 

life^ to preserve our faith intact^ ever 
growing deeper and leaving behind only its preju- 
dices^ has been the struggle of thousands of pious and 
perplexed inquirers after truth ; to pierce the many 
problems of our existence vdiich cast a midnight 
gloom over many a weary space of life; to under- 
stand some explanation of the many unsolved ques- 
tions of human suffering ; to do this^ amid baffling 
and disheartening facts^ and remain unshaken in 
fidelity and truth ; to preserve our trust in God's 
goodness and in each other^ amid much that bore 
no solution which we could find^ this has been 
the liard task assigned to faith. The heas^enly world 
breaks upon us^ and faith passes into it^ no longer to be 
distressed and shaken from its base^ but as the perfect 
trusty the ever deepening trust in our Father and in the 
great brotherhood of souls : all the dark clouds gen- 
dered over the earth, where confidence is so often mis- 
placed, and where man comes to live, if not in open dis- 
trust, yet in secret suspicion, of his brother, and of his 
Maker, shall roll away from that heavenly city, where 
God abides and man abides and perfect trust, whicli is 
the final form of faith, shall be the atmosphere of life. 
And hope abides, as an element in the other life. 
Not the hope of earth, which is so buoyant in early 



Heaven. 117 

days^ but so passive in later life ; not the hope wliicli 
" so often deferred maketh the heart sick/^ 

6. Progress and so often disappointed^ maketh the 
hope. soul to ask^ ^^ Who will show us any good?'' 

Hope^ in that other world^ will be an 
ever buoyant faculty^ which^ gratified in every 
holy desire^ with eager expectation will look forward 
to new fruitions. God is Infinite^ beyond the power 
of the finite to exhaust His gifts : there will always 
be some new revelation of His goodness to expect^ 
some new delight of His love to enjoy ^ some new 
truth of His exhaustless Being to learn. Nay^ the 
one thing that ever satisfies^ that never wearies is 
goodness ; it is ever fresh ; contains new surprises at 
every moment; affords new fruition in every hour of 
its possession. There can be no satiety in any form 
of goodness. To the hopeful spirits of heaven God 
will ^^ fulfill Himself in many ways/' and every ful- 
fillment will be an inexhaustible satisfaction. A 
world full of new expectations^ of new fruitions ; a 
world of pure and holy hopes^ and a world without 
disappointments; such will be the world we shall 
enter when God calls us to His presence. 

And finally love continues to abide, and as the 
greatest of all virtues. To the great 

7. Progress majority of human beings the progress of 
love. love is the '^ great good thing which God 

has prepared for those who love Him." 
Without it knowledge would be unsatisfactory^ faith 



118 In Paradise, 

would be dim^ and hope would be drear. Love is 
the essential nature of God, and must, therefore, be- 
come the essential character of those who mingle 
about His throne. '^ Heaven/^ one has eloquently 
said, " would seem to be in some especial manner 
their rightful inheritance : love is so infinite, and its 
earthly horizon so bounded, its earthly development 
so imperfect, its earthly catastrophes so sad; its un- 
dying tenacity, its profound tenderness, and its bound- 
less yearnings seem so incongruous, as contrasted with 
its frail objects, and its poor performances, and its 
momentary life. There are those, and the denizens 
of our anticipated world may consist of them in over- 
whelming proportion, of whose nature affection has 
been the mainspring, the strength, the sunbeam, the 
beauty, whose heart has been their chiefest treasure; 
to whom fame, ambition, power, success, have been at 
best only the casual and outside objects of existence; 
who, in a word, lived on love. Generation after 
generation, age after age, through the countless cycles 
of the past, human creatures have linked themselves 
together, never dreaming that their connection was 
limited by time, or that their ties would be severed by 
the Great Destroyer, and have consigned the husk 
and framework of their cherished companions to the 
dust, never doubting that these comrades watched 
over them from the spiritual world, and were waiting 
to receive them when the years w^ere ripe. Millions 
in all times have walked courageously into the great 



Heaven. 119 

darkness^ satisfied that they were going to rejoin the 
company of those whose places had been long " left void 
in their earthly homes/^ and^ after long yearnings^ to 
satisfy again ^^the mighty hunger of the heart in the 
fullness of eternal joy/^ And when these ties were once 
taken up again in heaven^ it would be without the 
shadow of any future separation; but^ in an atmosphere 
charged with love divine^ they would only deepen and 
grov/ more indissoluble with the progress of eternity. 

Here we bring our studies to a close. We have 
endeavored^ following only the words of the sacred 
narrative^ to make more real to the sorrow- 
Conclusion, ing and afflicted, the Christian interpreta- 
tion of Death, of Paradise, and of Heaven. 
There are ^^ great and precious promises/^ indeed, 
which are given us in Christ. Their vast reality 
will far exceed our feeble and imperfect human com- 
prehension. For when all has been said, it still re- 
mains true, " Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man the things 
which God hath prepared for those who love Him.'' 
We shall best gain some faint inkling of their undis- 
coverable preciousness by living now, as is, indeed, 
our most priceless privilege, the heavenly life. 

We can best realize the heaven that is to be by 
living in it ; by forcing ourselves to remember, amid 
the distractions of the world, that we are " citizens of 
no mean country ; '' by recalling the precious fact 
that " our citizenship is in Heaven/' 



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